Gingko

First snow finds me baking pumpkin pies from my first pumpkin harvest here in the cove, rendering a sample batch of deer tallow, watching does forage snowy brush and Chinese herbs from my kitchen window, and marvelling my most recent significant accomplishment.

First, the pies. The variety used was "Long Island Cheese," a small-medium sized flattish tan-colored eating pumpkin. These actually did better than my butternuts this year, for some reason. The yield wasn't extremely high, but enough for me to eat on through the winter, and satisfactory for something that I just plugged in little starts of in gaps in the herb beds as an afterthought. The pies they produce are delicious. I know this because I have made 9 this week, and had enough left over to make a miniature in a ramekin and taste of it.
The tallow rendered nicely- yielding a half cup from the scraps I scraped off of a deer hide I recently cleaned up. The color was an amber when liquid and a creamy white as a solid. The smell is rather gamey, and I am unsure as to whether I will be able to tolerate it as a base of a balsam poplar bud salve I want to make with it.

pumpkin pies with tiny jar of deer tallow

Now for the recent accomplishment: Monday of this week I planted my gingko tree in the yard. This in and of itself is nothing noteworthy, as the hole was not particularly difficult to dig, and I plant trees regularly enough for the task to feel somewhat commonplace. However, it is the transferrence of the plant into the ground from its home in the pot where the accomplishment lies. It is an arrival of sorts. A benchmark no doubt. You see, I have had the gingko tree in a pot for 15 years.
I purchased the wee seedling from one Mr. Eidus for $5 back in 1998. I just couldn't pass the little guy (or gal) up- with its commanding singular presence in its very own division of organisms- its ancient DNA gracing our modern existence with ancestral dreamings and beauty of by-gone eras. I knew that it was less than ideal to purchase a tree as a transient youngster in my early 20s, but I remember thinking, 'I will probably have my own land in about 3 years, 5 at the most, and I can take good care of a tree in a pot for that long.'

Fifteen years, 8 moves, a few thousand cookies and about 500 gallons of Barry's Tea later, here we are, the gingko and me, with a piece of earth and a sweet cold spring to call home. I planted the tree in front of the western corner of the house, where its lovliness can be showcased, it has ample room to grow, and maybe someday in 15 more years, if we are both still here, he or she can shade me and my living room from the hot afternoon summer sun. What a thought. Just as I had absolutely no clue as to how the past 15 years would unfold at the time I first met the gingko, I realize now as I step into the next 15 that I am just as clueless as to what is to come. You just never know what is going to happen. Ever.

Ritual

It's been a while now since I met a very nice gentleman at the Depot in Marshall who, in a roundabout way, first introduced me to what has become a favorite wild food of mine. There was a night, back when I lived in the infamous garage apartment on Hickory Flats (The "G.A."), when I sat in my neighbor's Kia, slapped on a little red lipstick with her, and we rode over to the Depot for a memorable night of dancing, cakewalking and people watching. Oh the people watching that could be done at the Depot then...They just don't make em like they used to; I'll leave it at that. Anyways, after the Depot we headed back to her house where I propmtly got drunk on her husband's homemade wine, and we sat in the kitchen telling stories and laughing and carrying on. My mind is just a wee bit fuzzy from that night (clear throat awkwardly), but I think that was the night that particular neighbor friend sent me home with an Ingles bag of paw paws given to her by her friend at the Depot. (Disclaimer: it is possible that I am getting two different nights confused here, possibly even from different years.)

Regardless of the nitty gritty details of the timing of which Depot night what happened, one of those nights back then I experienced my first paw paw ever. And it came from the trees of a very nice gentleman from the Depot, who has sinced moved from those trees, but the trees remain. And year after sweet year, I drive over to those trees in mid to late September and let the warmth of the angled autumnal sun remind me of all that is simple and precious about communing with a place in real time. A year passes. Time for another visit. The yard with the paw paw trees lies in front of an old farm house. No human inhabits this place anymore, and the weeds are taller than me in places. There is an old rose surviving next to the house, its aroma sweet and sad and emitting memories that I have no place in, but long for nonetheless.

I have not read Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire, but I read the introduction. This year when I was reaping the harvest of the almost forgotten aforementioned paw paw trees, I couldn't help but think these trees really are having their way with me. I collect their fruits without fail each fall, and then I distribute those fruits far and wide, aided by my petroleum fueled modes of transportation and my generous nature. I am a seed spreading machine for those two trees- making sure portions of the bounty end up in various counties all over these mountains. And each recipient of the harvest in turn consumes the sweet alluring flesh and then does exactly what the trees want it to do- deposits the seeds in new fresh soil, thus enhancing the gene pool of the range of whatever nighttime fly or beetle paw paw pollinator might inhabit this particular place. I think I am looting some mad paw paw booty for myself and my people, but what I am really doing is spreading the seed of this strain of Asimina tribola to places much farther than the tree possibly ever dreamed of. Badass, Michael Pollan. Badass.

Old house with paw paw trees to the left

This time of year, you will find me busy trying to find all sorts of ways to enjoy North America's largest native fruit. Blended with whole milk to make a paw paw smoothie (my favorite), eaten plain as a snack with some wild nuts such as chestnuts, combined with other fruit and liquor to form a paw paw colada (watch out) or just eaten straight up plain as is for breakfast. Countertops, dashboards and refrigerator shelves are all lined with paw paws in varying degrees of ripeness. And also, you will find me geeking out on reading and quoting things that other paw paw aficionados have written about this bodacious Appalachian berry. Check these for some most interesting info!:
http://www.clemson.edu/hort/peach/pdfs/northamericanpawpaw.pdf
http://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/the-paw-paw-a-favored-fruit-of-the-mastodon/
Turns out, paw paws are quite nutritious. Apparently they are quite old too- the second link talks about 50 million year old paw paw fossils!

Getting Our Bearings

Looking toward Hot Springs with Bluff Mountain in the way distance (left side of photo)


In the pines, in the pines


June with long human shadows


A future destination- that mountain above the double wide

I am delighted to have found a partner in foot exploration. Those who know me personally will probably be quick to agree that I am terrible with directions. When I got my license at age 16, the first place I wanted to drive by myself was to my best friend's house. I had been going there since first grade. I got in the car to leave, but then I had to go back into the house and ask my parents for directions on how to get there. They thought I was kidding. I was not kidding. Even now at my job working landscaping, it is not uncommon for me to need to ask directions to a client's house that I have been to many times. I am not dumb or really all that slow-witted. It is something about not being able to easily recall spacial relationships of different things- rooms in a house, roads, landmarks. I can remember them, but the way they are oriented in relation to each other gets all muddled up in my brain. Always has been that way. Living in these here mountains can get really confusing, even for the most directionally apt person. You walk around a ridge and down a holler, and you get all turned around as to which way is which. It really helps me understand where I am and where other things are if I can walk the terrain and go to various view points, especially in the winter, and see where everything is.

Being on foot and walking the land is the crucial factor here. I love travelling and exploring places on foot. Always have. Usually it has been a solo endeavor, but the times I have found a suitable foot travel companion, it is very fun and exciting- pretty much one of my top favorite ways to spend time with someone.
I am most happy to have discovered my dear friend and neighbor Moonie to be a most compatible walking companion. She shares the love of getting one's bearings by walking all around, and she has lots of places that she would love to walk to- just because. I am all about it. Today, being the clear, cold and sunny winter day that it was, was a perfect time to set out with a few provisions and see where we could go in an afternoon.
Our loosely discussed mission was to walk to the old childhood homeplace of Shorty, the queen of the hollerhood, who has passed on, but whose legacy is very much alive and kicking. I was wandering around a couple years ago and came upon the sweetest, most lovely, quiet, uninhabited meadowy farmstead, that I later found out was Shorty's childhood homeplace. I couldn't exactly remember how I got there, but we figured we'd try. We had a limited amount of time, because Moonie had dinner plans, and we didn't find it today, but the walk was most magnificent nontheless. Stunning views, dark cold piney hollers, old lonesome homeplaces tucked way back where the sun don't shine, brilliant sun glowing off of a fresh layer of snow, a late afternoon sun dog. And now we have an excuse to get together again real soon to try again. I am hoping that these walking adventures become a somewhat regular occurence.

Last Day (of the season)

SG and I finished our season of work today as groundskeepers of the Mountain Magnolia Inn, my parents' business. To the best of my calculations, I have been tending those 2 1/4 acres of grounds there for 12 years now. Every year I tell myself and others that it is my last year, and then early the next spring I go back and work the grounds for another year. There are several truths of the matter. One, I love the place. Two, it's a killer work gig for Hot Springs, land of very few job opportunities. Three, each season that I work the grounds there, my awareness becomes more finely tuned to the sense of place and the subtleties that can only be perceived about a place slowly over time. I love how I can smell the first breeze of spring there in about mid February, and how the flowers of April and May always shock me with their beauty and intoxicating aromas. I love to drink wine from the enormous petals of the magnolia tree, and how its perfume transports me back to my childhood and sometimes it seems even to a time before I was born. I love the summer cicadas, and how the very first wind of fall blasts me with sadness in August and sends walnut leaves swirling all around the place- I always have to stop in my tracks and watch that happen. And then the third week of August rolls around and like clockwork, the spider lilies pop up out of the lawn with no leaves and bloom like crazy. In September the zinnias get really moldy, but the garden asters go hog wild. October brings leaves to rake, and there is always lots of comradarie to be had with fellow rakers. On a chilly damp day we burn all the brush and branches pruned and gathered throughout the year, and usually someone from the fire department comes to see that everything is OK. In November the light is scarce afternoons as we prepare our hearts for the dark of the year and tuck in all the gardens for the winter. The end of the end is cutting off the well pump and draining the irrigation. That happened today.

Tending the gardens there year after year satisfies some deep need of mine- a need to stay put and be a part of something. I lament the fact that I did not get to spend my childhood on that piece of earth, with those trees to climb and the river just across the railroad tracks. I wish I had known this place my whole life, and that all my people were here and that there were not missing links or fragments of life and memories. Really, I have this opinion that us humans are not hard-wired to live the way we live in this day and age, to see so many places but not really know them, to take in so much information and try to keep tabs on the whole wide world.

But alas, we are an adaptable species, and I will continue patronizing the world wide web, and listening to the news on NPR as I drive to a whole other city and county to work most mornings. I will continue to watch foreign movies and travel to other places and talk to all sorts of people just to hear their stories. The thing is though, I bet come next spring, about the middle of February, you can find me pruning hemlock trees and sowing larkspur seeds at the Mountain Magnolia in Hot Springs- even if I may have sworn up and down I wasn't going to be doing that again.