every day is a good day
Some things are inexplicable. Like why isn’t kohlrabi served at every meal? Why isn’t kohlrabi seen in every shopping cart in supermarkets? Peeled and sliced, it is crisp and juicy, sweet and mild, the ultimate snack food, the most refreshing salad, the optimal side dish to any meal. It is so delicious, parents could use it to make their children behave. “Put that down this minute, or there will be no kohlrabi for you!” That would work one hundred percent of the time.
Crowds gather along the shores to watch the evening sun set on the ocean, to see the fading light pull its glow over the islands and waves. Who rushes into the garden to see the sun slip its last rays through the kohlrabi? The evening sun makes the kohlrabi seem even more sensual. Could these possibly be the first photos ever posted of kohlrabi at sunset? I did several queries and didn’t find a single picture of a kohlrabi lit by the setting sun.
There is a dearth of photos of vegetables glowing in the setting sun. No photos of cabbage, carrots, rubystreaks, or dried bean pods at twilight. During my search, I did learn that in Vermont, the night before Halloween is called Cabbage Night. Children go out into the fields to collect rotten vegetables, so that when they go trick or treating, they can toss the rotten vegetables at those who don’t give them a treat. Hopefully they leave the kohlrabi behind. A spoiled kohlrabi will crack a skull wide open.
Maybe if they went out before sunset and saw how beautiful vegetable plants are when lit by the evening sun’s gentle rays, they wouldn’t think of throwing rotten vegetables.
I better stop telling how beautiful vegetable plants are before there are hoards of photo snapping tourists, lined outside the gate, clambering to get in to photograph the vegetables at sunset.
Fall is the time of brilliant reds. On a sunny day, it looks like the leaves are on fire. I’m not sure the chickens are impressed. Many of them have combs redder and more brilliant than any leaf can dream of being.
Skunky’s mother is too busy rearing her next brood to worry about the fall leaves. And Tangerine and her chicks scamper around my feet when I split wood. You have to swing your ax carefully when you have a mother hen and her chicks running around at your feet.
A warm, sunny fall day is made for building new bridges. There was a narrow bridge here until a tree came down and split it in two. The replacement bridge is twice as wide and much stronger, a perfect bridge to ford the ravine to enter the western woods on the other side. You can’t see them, but there are chickens in the ravine, scratching in the muddy waters in search of good things to eat. The forest on the other side is a favorite hunting ground of the chickens. Now, they’ll have an easy bridge to cross the ravine, and so will BB on his rabbit hunts.
For me, this is the color of warmth. On a future day when a cold wind is blowing out of the north, this wood will keep us warm. The tree came down a year ago. Now I’m splitting it to stack for next year. Each piece, as it burns, will burn in its own way, casting its own warm glow. No two pieces burn the same way.
There is evidence of humans burning wood nearly two millions years ago. More than a million years ago, our distant, distant, distant ancestors, some 80,000 generations ago, gathered wood, thinking this is the color of warmth too.
Nothing says summer is over than a fire in the wood stove. Yesterday, to take the chill off, I lit a fire in the wood stove. Summer is over when the hubbard squash are ready to eat. Summer is over when the vine maples turn crimson. In July, summer seemed like it would go on forever. Rain was a distant memory. I began to question if it ever got cold in the Pacific Northwest. Ha! The joke was on me. With a fire crackling in the wood stove, summer is now the memory.
