Blood in his jaws, the bone he drops

A few days ago, I was interrupted by a tap at the Jeep’s window while working in the Mobile Office, enjoying the wifi from the hippie soccermom café across the street without suffering the overweening helicopterror of its mothers.  Startled by the disruption, I turned to find a coyote dangling on the other side of the window, tongue out, head down, swinging slightly, suspended from the arm of a neighbor, who’d just successfully trapped it and wanted to show it off before returning it to the trunk of his car.  And don’t worry– I’ve shot my load on sanctimony for the season*; the trapper is doing what trappers do, or some similar zennish statement of effect.  I get it, see.  But the pendulous coyote got me thinking again of food, and of the things I should’ve grown but didn’t this season, and thinking that if I don’t commit them to the indelibility of pixelled prose, they’ll surely be forgotten again next year.  And so, here’s the

Partial And Probably Growing List of Things I Need to Get Growing Next Year, No Damned Fooling This Time:

1> Take Stock, Dumbass!
I made a perfect kale and potato soup the other night, to discover that I had no stock.  Meanwhile, so many carrot bits and onion bits and other vegetable bits went into the compost and into pigbellies, and so many mushrooms retreated groundward when I had no time to deal with them.  Why didn’t I spend at least a night or two simmering it all down to stock?  Probably because I was too busy thinking of just the right sex-metaphors to bring random passersby to my woodland vagrant website.  And now, shamefully, I have to spend the winter buying supermarket stock for my otherwise pristine and garden-borne slurpfests.  It’s enough to make me want to give up on the whole lot and become the sort of lady who enjoys pedicures and fruity booze.

 

2> Head in the Ground
Can I even grow ginger here?  Common wisdom seems to suggest that while it can survive cold winters, it prefers more warmth than I have to offer it.  But I made quarts of chutney loaded with the stuff, and think it could be the new thing to fret and pout over.  Next year, ginger, you’ll grow for me or I’ll kill you trying.  It’s on.

 

3> I will Never Be Fruity Enough
Sure, I made chutney.  I thought it was a little hippie of me, then I remembered that I urinate in the woods.  Daily.

I recently came into some apples, extras from a neighbor’s cider press.  Not apples from my own trees.  The saplings I planted haven’t done much, and next year I may spring for a tree from a shop, maybe a tree that’s been designed to be transplanted into unforgiving habitats, instead of a tree that grows like a root in its own soil but disappoints you after you take the great effort to bring it home and find just the right spot for it.  Apples and ginger.  A girl could spend her adult years getting fat and bloated and good and drunk on the stuff.

 

4> Stinkbottomless Pit
I planted little pickling onions of the sort that’s best served in a Bloody Mary or three, and didn’t plant horseradish.  Because I’m apparently a certifiable tool.  Next year.

 

5> We Really Like Whiskey Slushy
Every time I plod on about my troubles getting a mint patch started, I’m met with matchingly annoying tales of woe about how mint has taken over your garden.  Too much mint?  That’s fucking terrific.  Go drink a frozen mint julep while I sit here enjoying my endless bounty of oregano and all my ferns.  I’ve planted mint from transplanted roots, transplanted clippings, from seeds, and from expensive catalogue plants.  Not a damned thing stuck.  Next year I’ll figure it out, in all the time I’m not spending slaving over the ginger.

 

6> Getting High From Potatoes
Why does nobody around here sell sweet potato sets, and why does nobody grow them?  Do you now know this is vegetable candy we’re talking about here?  This is not unlike finding out that one can grow chocolate-covered cocaine, and that it’s legal and non-addictive and maybe even full of vitamins, yet nobody bothers because the growing season’s a little precarious.  Chocolate-covered cocaine potatoes, next year, are mine.  And I may or may not share.

 

7> Garlic Sunrise.
OK.  I need professional help with this, maybe.  It’s supposed to be like Mint.  You’re supposed to sneeze on a plot of well-turned land, and wait for garlic, especially around here.  Unlike Mint, I have successfully gotten garlic to grow for the past two years.  However, the fruits of my labor are these tiny and underachieving bulbs of maybe 3-4 (perfectly-sized) cloves a pop, the cloves themselves growing to full size and looking healthy all season.  I’ve read conflicting advice on the matter:  some say this is indicative of the wrong land, or the wrong seed garlic.  Others say to replant what you’ve grown, that it takes a few years for garlic to thrive in any one piece of land.  So, which is it?  What am I doing wrong?  Why can’t I have that nice braid of plump bulbs hanging from my windowsill like any self-respecting woodland dweller?  I am seeding new cloves of a different variety and some of my meager collection from this year, and hope that one of them turns out next year.  Because I’ll need it, to mask the scent of my chocolate cocaine plants. (Dear DEA, FBI, and ATF computer keyword scanners:  it’s a metaphor!  You know, a joke?)

There are other lessons, to be sure, but this is about all a fractured ego can handle for one day.  Soup and sauce, among my favorite things to slurp**.  What’s increased self-sufficiency without being able to make a little noise when you eat?  Way less fun, that’s what.

* but apparently not on innuendo that drives all sorts of pornseekers here. Hi! Were you looking for the post on my BIG MELONS?  Or the one about my LABIAL HERB GARDEN?

** see?