“I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.”
I have finished posting the last of my cucumber recipes for the season. Truth is, we couldn’t take any more of this determined plant. We’ve eaten more cucumber dishes this summer than I may have eaten in the last 5 or 6 years combined, and I was anxious to plant something new in its place. While tearing the vines off of the (very successful!) trellis experiment, we noticed several cucumbers that had been hidden away beneath the thick vine cover, now beyond the eating stage and well into the seed-curing stage.
I must admit that I am somewhat fearful about the prospect of saving my own seeds. While I fully embrace the concept, and I have had a few small successes with saved tomato seeds, I find it hard to imagine that I could do something, myself, that I have been relying on Burpee — for years and years — to do for me.
A change is slowly coming over me. Having lived in southern California for more than half of my life, I find that it has taken me nearly this long to overcome the prejudice, ingrained in me by my home state of Pennsylvania, that we do not have “true” seasons here. I was taught that Spring was for planting, Summer for growing, Autumn for harvesting and Winter for resting and planning for the next garden.
Not so! We very much have seasons, here in Orange County, and each is a special time for planting certain crops, growing certain crops, and harvesting certain crops. It is the cycling of crops that is important in my garden, now. Now, more than ever before, the lessons I have learned through studying the Wheel of the Year are realized in my own hands, with my own seeds, in my own dirt, by my own spirit.
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Did you ever have to say goodbye to a friend? We have all lost loved ones to death, but I am speaking here of losing a friend — who just left. I am speaking of the intense kind of friendship — have everything in common friendship, do everything together friendship, be together always friendship — that you sometimes feel you have searched and searched your whole life to find, that just — without warning or explanation — totally and permanently ends. You wake up one day to find your best, truest friend is gone, because they have chosen to go.
I have had that happen several times to me, probably not surprising over the period of sixty years I have lived. It is sometimes easy, after the pain has lessened, to understand why it had to be so. But, not always. Sometimes, it remains one of life’s so-called “cruel lessons”.
Every once in awhile, I get the idea that I might reach out to that old friend, let them know how much I loved them and how much I’ve missed them, and ask if we might try and rebuild that once-beautiful friendship we had. But, that would be nonsense, I realize. What’s gone is gone. What’s dead is dead.
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And then I look at my garden. These are the last of the King Kong Zucchinis for this year. Three zucchinis, totaling most of 16#, each close to a foot-and-a-half long. Truth is, we couldn’t take any more of this determined plant.
These zucchinis had to go.
They were wonderful while they lasted and gave me more than I ever thought possible, hundreds of pounds of fruit, dozens of delicious meals.
But, I couldn’t take any more. I longed for a new plant to grow in its place — kale, beets, cabbage, anything but zucchini!
We will eat what we can of these, and allow the ripest one or two to cure for a week or so, and then harvest the seeds. Hopefully, the seeds will retain the same strength and vigor as the Mother Plant, and King Kong will return to my garden next year, or even the next. This garden friend is not gone — permanently and totally — as long as the seeds remain. The friendship may not be the same, the plants may be less productive, the fruit more commonly sized. But, as long as I have seeds, I have the promise of many new, delicious, zucchini memories to come.
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I’m not going to call my friend. As tempted as I am to know that I was, also, loved and I have, also, been missed, I fear that this is not so. I fear that I grew in a garden that was allowed to whither and die, left to ruin after one, final harvest.
But, because of this death, I have grown into my own special King Kong variety of friend. I am so much more than I was then, and a much better friend to myself than I ever knew how to be. As long as I hold onto the memory of my friend, I hold onto a seed that may grow, once more, should I choose to plant it. It may not be the same as it was, but — who knows? — it may even be better.