Salsa Gardens and Bird Watching

My father grew up on a farm, and his love of working outdoors and understanding the land has resulted in one of the greenest lawns on the block, decorated by bright geraniums, impatiens, and whatever flowers he lets me add to the clay and plastic pots around the house.  He fertilizes the yard more often than I understand, keeps track of how many minutes the lawnmower is in use and constantly calculates when the blade will need sharpened or new oil added.  In the spring we spend hours planting annuals for hanging baskets and containers on the deck, while my mother nods her head at the colorful flower petals and tries to grab them.

 

She watches my father uncovers a dusty soft-water salt bag from the furnace closet.  He examines the canna bulbs inside the plastic bag, trying to determine which will grow this year.  One by one, he plants them along the property line.  They will grow all summer, and after the first hard freeze in the fall, he will dig up the bulbs and store them for the winter, just as his parents and sisters have done for decades.

My mother watches him fill plastic garden containers and five gallon buckets with water every evening.  At first she wants to help, so he gives her a watering can and she drenches the first few cannas in the line of twelve.  As the plants grow through the summer to her height and beyond, she continues to pour all the water on the first two plants.  My father observes, interested in her method of dousing every leaf with water and completely ignoring the soil.  She takes her job seriously, even though my father still winds up watering all of the plants on his own.  Eventually, even holding a watering can is too confusing for her, so she just follows him around the yard as he attends to the plants and flowers.  On the really hot days, she stays inside and keeps vigil at the window my father stops at each plant and flower.  She points her index finger at him and laughs, repeating, “There! There!” in the same excited voice she uses to call attention to blackbirds, robins, rabbits, squirrels, and all the other exotic backyard critters she sees.

My father adds birdseed to feeders at least once a week, and even though the squirrels besiege the feeders sometimes, he also provides ears of corn for them.  And just like the persistent yardlife, he tries adapting to the changing conditions. My father is very good at using creativity to create order, but predicting my mother’s activities becomes more than challenging.

My mother carries a fast food cup filled with ice.  My father rests on a chair in the living room, watching her carry the cup around the kitchen as she flips through her magazines.  Suddenly, she is standing in the entry way to the living room, where she smiles and then tosses the cup at my father.  It lands three feet away, ice spilling onto the carpet.  She laughs and points at the new mess, apparently very pleased with the outcome.

My mother wakes up around 4:30 each morning and begins wandering around the main floor of the house like a squirrel.  In his half-asleep state, my father hears rustling from the other rooms as she picks up and deposits various magazines, taps the TV remote on the table, digs through the garbage, shakes the cookie jar, and returns to make the bed (with him in it).  When my father’s electronic alarm finally turns on at 5:45, he sits up and discovers my mother’s side is set with not only her pillow, but the four accent pillows arranged in a neat line, with the lid to the laundry basket placed at the end.

My father begins making and canning salsa around the time of my mother’s diagnosis.  When he tires of buying the ingredients from the store, he commandeers a 2’x12’ plot of land behind his garden shed and plants tomatoes and peppers.  My mother watches as he diligently waters the cherry, Roma, and garden tomatoes, and even holds the basket when he gathers the ripe ones on Saturdays.  She used to really enjoy fresh tomatoes from the garden, but now she doesn’t seem to know what they are.

When I am young, maybe four or five years old, my father converts an old caged-in area (used by the previous owner for dogs) into a garden.  On one summer day, I follow him through the rows of green leaves as he points out onions and tomatoes and other foods I don’t really believe are growing there.  He explains that many of the plants aren’t ready yet, but he digs around in the soil for a minute anyway.  He pulls out a holey orange stick with roots growing from it at odd angles.  The specimen is curved slightly at the top and bottom, and between the root appendices are spots of brown.  My father lifts it by the green leaves at the top and smiles. 

“Ah,” he says, “a carrot.”

It doesn’t look like any carrot I‘d ever seen, and certainly not anything that came from a can or the freezer.

“Go give this to your mom,” he says, handing it to me.  “We’ll have it for supper.”

I take the offering, still not really believing it is a carrot.  A worm-creature with legs drops from the side as I hold it at arm’s length.  As I start toward the house, my father’s voice catches my attention—“Here we go! This is a good one.”

He tosses something that lands at my feet:  an orange cone free of roots, bugs, and divots.  “A carrot!” I exclaim, relieved that they did exist like the one in Bugs Bunny’s cartoons.

“Take that, too,” he orders, and turns back to the garden.

I complete  my duty and take the carrots, one in each hand, to the kitchen where my mother is doing something at the sink.  I proudly display our harvest, and she frowns.

“Your dad sent that one?” she asks, pointing to the non-carrot carrot.

“Yeah,” I assure her, explaining that he said we should have it for supper.

She pulls an old Tupperware bowl from the cabinet and puts the deformed veggie inside.

“Fine,” she says, opening the sliding door to the deck, “if he wants it, he can have it.”  She sets the bowl on the deck and closes the door behind her.

My mother witnesses my father makes salsa, hot salsa.  He uses peppers from the garden, and even when we ask for something, milder, every batch turns out the same: spicy.  My mother will not eat this salsa.  Finally, he perfects “mild,” and the dozen jars he cans are practically gone within a few months   For four years, my father labels his jars with the date and “hot,” “semi-hot,” “spicy,” “very hot.”  They are all really hot, though.  He is good at this, and even gets a request from one of my cousins for super-spicy.  My father doesn’t settle for the “very hot” jars already sitting in the basement.  Instead, he makes it his mission to grow the hottest peppers he can find at the plant market and start fresh.  He adds a new pepper to the garden and makes sure it thrives through the summer wind and drought.  He chuckles a little when he looks at he plant, as if unsure what devastation the “super spicy” will bring to anyone who dares to eat it. 

My mother watches as he decides the time is right to make the special batch of salsa.  He ceremoniously amasses his ingredients and preps the canning materials.  Worried about just how hot the new peppers might be, he buys rubber kitchen gloves to use when handling them.  He places two large cooking pots on the stove—one for salsa, one fore sealing the jars.  I ask if he is turning into a mad scientist. 

“You never know,” he replies in a serious voice.

My mother points at him and laughs.  He smiles back at her.