My Personal Almanac

There has been a feeling of detachment hovering around me lately, of disconnection and a low, abiding sorrow seemingly outside the scope of the world as seen through the lenses of the impact of the pandemic, isolation, and civil unrest. I haven't been able to pinpoint the source of these feelings,  and not for a lack of trying. I've just been missing something and I'm not quite sure what it is.

Two days ago I received a package from my favorite tea business, Catskill Mountain Tea Company, with seven different blends of tea. Rootbeer, Thorne Valley, Autumn Leaves, Golden Sunrise, Winter Cherry, Rip van Winkle, and Serenity Valley. The names themselves are delicious, and the scents overwhelmed me in a happy way as soon as I opened the shipping box. Sassafras, lemon, rose, ashwagandha, jasmine, just to name a few. I opened each bag and tin so I could take a good whiff of each tea and decide which I wanted to try first. As I did that I finally identified what I have been missing.

As much as I am a homebody, I also love to be on the go, adventuring with my love. I am used to noticing and marking the passing of the seasons by what I see blooming in gardens and fields as we drive along. The seasonal views and the bloom cycles of the native wildflowers of the Blue Ridge Parkway are part of my personal almanac, and I feel somewhat adrift for not seeing them.

I miss roadside produce stands and their hand-lettered signs that tell me what they have in stock, and thereby knowing what is in season. I even miss thinking things like, "It's too early for peaches here, those can't be local." I miss thinking nothing of driving down to South Carolina to find peaches, then driving home with the car filled with the intoxicatingly sweet scent of luscious, juicy goodness. I miss going on an unplanned day-trip around this area, seeking berries and corn and green beans and knowing that we could stop whenever we felt like it for a meal or a drink in a local diner. I miss seeing a large bloom of honeysuckle and parking nearby to breathe in that heady scent and harvest a few blooms to taste the nectar.

I miss wandering through farmers markets, taking in the vibrant colors and aromas, marking the seasons by what is available, what looks healthy, what smells fresh and good. I miss asking the growers and makers about their products. I miss coming home with a basket full of goodness.

I am surrounded by gardens here at the Cottage, but I am in the early stages of knowing the seasons here because they are quite different than they were in the shadows of Mount Pisgah. When I moved from upstate New York to the mountains of North Carolina it took time for my body and spirit to adjust to the differences in how and when the seasons presented, and I was able to do that by paying attention to the sensory clues that nature makes available.

Now that I know what I've been missing, I will work on finding a way to adapt.

Juneberry Pie of My Dreams

There are a great many things wrong with the City of Asheville, NC, but one of the things they managed to get right was establishing a Food Action Plan that supports access to healthy food in a limited sense of those words. There are multiple places in the city where fruit and nut trees provide harvest for anyone to enjoy, and there is an online map to help folks find those locations. (Link at the end of this post.)

Six years ago I learned about Asheville's Juneberries (a/k/a Serviceberries) through an on-line group, and decided I had to see what all the fuss was about. I located some of the trees, periodically checked to see if the fruit was ripe, and when it was I sampled that sweet juicy goodness. The berries are small, taste like a mixture of blueberry and cherry, and instantly became my favorite berry EVAH. 

I requested assistance from my favorite co-adventurer and together we picked a couple of berry buckets full in less than half an hour. The trees we were picking from then were probably five or six years old and produced an incredible crop; what we put in our buckets and our mouths was less than a third of the ripe berries on each tree. We took our treasure home, and with our combined harvest I made a Juneberry pie and canned some pie filling. Two jars of that filling went to friends who also had never had Juneberries, and I put two jars into the pantry with the mindful intention of using them to call up summer when the weight of winter became too heavy. One particularly cold winter day I opened those jars of pie filling and baked a pie and a cobbler that each held the bright, warm taste of Summer's promises. 

That was the day I knew that if we were ever able to buy our own home we were going to plant Juneberry trees. And we did, and so we did. In about two weeks we will mark the one year anniversary of our move in date, and the day after that we will mark the one year anniversary of the Juneberry trees (Amelanchier x grandiflora, Autumn Brilliance) that were planted in our front yard the day after we officially moved in. Appalachian Creek Nursery helped get our dream of a critter and pollinator friendly yard off to a fine start. 

At that time I noted that when the Wheel of the Year began to turn back to summer again we should be harvesting berries from our own trees if we could manage to save any of them from the bears and the birds. I hoped there would be a pie or two made and maybe even a few jars set up.

It was a special sort of delight this year to watch as the leaves started to grow, and then the flowers came, and finally the first berries started to show. I've never had fruit trees before, and I thought I would have to race the birds once the berries were actually ripe. Wrong! One day I watched for an hour as a mockingbird came and went repeatedly, taking red, unripened berries from one of the trees. As with everything here at the Cottage, it was our intention to share the harvest with the critters, but I thought at that rate there would never be any harvest to share. I made the decision to net the trees to keep the birds away, and I will just say that is something I will never do again. The trees were miserable, the birds were confused, and I had to rescue several butterflies who became trapped inside the netting. 

Traumatic netting aside, the berries survived and within a week were ripe enough to start picking. The first taste of the first berries from the trees grown by Cottage land and Cottage energy was divine. I'm not saying that lightly, or tritely. I made a pact with this land, and this harvest was part of the reward for keeping my end of the bargain. Be mindful if ever you do something similar to do what you said you would do. The rewards can be grand in many different ways, but the opposite could be unthinkable.

I took my time picking those berries. I talked to the trees and thanked them, I looked at the branch structure, and the leaves, and even the saplings coming out of the ground. I also took notice of the cluster patterns of berries at the end of new growth, already beginning to get some idea on how each tree will need to be pruned back. And of course I was tasting berries as I was picking, standing in the sun in the front yard. I had waited a long time for this harvest and I wanted to enjoy every moment. 

This first harvest season for these trees I took about 8 cups of fruit, and the birds took that much as well. I believe that is pretty good for two year old trees, and look forward to the harvest increasing every year. I have been a bit surprised that the neighborhood bears haven't taken their share...yet.

Does it surprise you to know I baked a pie the night I picked those berries? I savored the taste of it at the very end of the day, and the flavor melted into my mouth and my spirit, a combination of the sweetest summer memories and the best summer promises ever made. These are the things that keep me grounded in the here and now, living every moment of every day. 

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