Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Suspended Fruit

I know green beans are technically a vegetable.
This year I planted French climbers that didn't really yield until early this month.  The pods are 8 to 10 inches long and won't be contained in a pint jar.  As the jars were cooling, the tips of the beans hung suspended like ballerina toes and I had to snap a shot.
The dill bean recipe is from Marlene Crofoot, and is a basic vinegar, water, salt brine with a clove a garlic and a sprinkle of hot red pepper flakes.
I get warm and fuzzy when I see my pantry cupboard filling with preserved jars of pickles, tomato sauce, fruit jams, pickled beets.  Just need to add some applesauce to the mix.




Fall in love in autumn
Golden light, ripened fruit sweet juice dripping,
Peels to earth fermenting, pit and stone
Sailing seeds, bursting husks

Fall in love in excess
Too sweet too much too soon
Gorging on a harvest of emotion
Not carefully tendered

Not carefully tended like the spring sapling
Bare root tender shoot
Braced against the elements, allowed to harden off
Adding tooth to the bark

Swollen rosehips precede the rose
Currants, black and pendulant before the tiny green pearls
Wild plums oozing honey relegate the froth of blossoms
Thorns! Thorns all around

Fall in love in autumn
Let spring find you hapless, rootless,
Stuck through with cockleburs
Berry stained and smiling.

by Cookie, autumn of 2005

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