The Spoils of Summer
Growing up in Atlanta, I was never more than a 15 minute drive from my grandmother’s house and her garden. Except during my college years, most meals I ate had a little bit of my grandmother somewhere on the plate. I remember that a hot, humid Georgia July day spent picking blackberries until my hands were covered in fine scratches meant the very next day would be spent in Grandma’s steaming kitchen making blackberry jelly. We shelled beans while watching TV and shucked endless ears of corn. Spending time at Grandma’s during the summer was sweat plus red dirt with a little Avon mixed in for fun.
At the time, I didn’t realize that I was being trained for a lifetime of food and nutrition preferences. I didn’t really know what store-bought canned green beans looked like until I went to college because I grew up eating ones either fresh from Grandma’s garden or plucked from the bounty of Ball jars that lined our basement shelves. Grandma’s garden produced more than we could eat, so canning and freezing were part of the summer ritual just as much as hoeing weeds.
Before Grandma passed away, I used to drop by after work, paper grocery sack in hand. We’d visit for a spell before we moseyed out back and filled my bag with a few days worth of veggies. When I began dating John (now my husband), he thought our “Visits for Veggies” was some exotic Southern concept. If Grandma wasn’t home, we’d let ourselves in the backyard, pick what we needed for supper and leave a note tucked in the screen door.
As an adult, I’ve eschewed the canned fruit and vegetable aisle at the grocery store, opting for the produce section instead and I’ve become a farmer’s market junkie. I tolerate frozen veggies because I know they are frozen at their peak state of nutrition, but the motions of picking, say, the perfect tomato out of a pile transports me back to a happy time.
With all the home training I received from Grandma, you’d think I’d be an avid home gardener or urban farmer, but I’m not. When we lived in DC and Chicago, container planting with herbs was the best I could manage space-wise. When we moved back East and first settled into Old Town Alexandria, I saw the amount of work our friends put in their community garden plot and made a mental note to be always available for dinner at their house once the tomatoes started to come in. My shame at not inheriting the garden grind gene only bothers me occasionally.
When we moved to Arlington, four huge trees shaded much of our lawn, so I was back to being the mistress of a 5-planter container herb garden. This summer’s heat, while almost unbearable for humans, has contributed to a bumper crop of basil. Copious amounts of basil mean fresh pesto in our house and my afternoon yesterday focused solely on pesto production.
For a few hours, I grated, snipped and chopped, channeling my Grandma as best I could. The end result was delicious, both in taste and memories recalled.
The Spoils of Summer by Amy Knebel