Liturgy

Today, I harvested the last head of Couve Tronchuda, one of my favorite green vegetables, from the garden. It was bolting, sending up green firework heads that would eventually open to spires of white, cross-shaped flowers. Someday, I'll grow a large enough population to save seed from this plant so I can experience a giant row of blooming cruciferous sparklers. I also harvested the second-to-last head of red cabbage, and piles of mache. The Lacinato kale is also bolting mightily, and I need to harvest it soon, too. I have so many greens to eat, but I'm not complaining, nor am I sharing right now either. This is good stuff, and in a little bit I won't have it any more, so I'll eat and eat and eat the green until it's gone, and miss it until it's back next winter.

In tonight's dinner, I used the last jar of tomatoes from the summer. Meanwhile, in little make-shift greenhouses in the front yard, some of this year's tomato seedlings are setting their first true leaves, and pepper seedlings are growing under lights in the living room.

Though I worry that writing about the same things year after a year—the cyclicality of a year—might bore my readers, to me, it is never boring. It is the liturgy of the garden, the reminders of seed to full food plant, the constant transformation of growing and dying. To be bored by the cyclicality, to me, means to be bored by life, and life is never boring.