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a garden of delights, with writer ross gay; vegetable soup to freeze
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Hello ,
The words joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay‘s work, and so do moments he spends in his garden and descriptions of his relationship to plants. Now is it a coincidence that the garden is a main character in his books, books with the titles “Inciting Joy” and “The Book of Delights” and the latest, “The Book of (More)
Delights”?
As a longtime gardener who finds both joy and delight in my life outdoors, I don’t think so. It’s no surprise to me at all that from garlic-and-sweet-potato harvest times or devouring fresh figs from a friend’s tree, Ross Gay finds himself positively delighted. (Above, self-sown sunflowers and towering castor beans; Natasha Komoda photo.) I wanted you to meet him and hear about his work and learn what he’s up to in his Indiana garden. Ross Gay’s four books of poetry and three of essays have won him much praise. He teaches writing at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he also gardens. Plus: Enter to win a
copy of “The Book of (More) Delights.”
making vegetable soup for the freezer Like the best recipes, it’s a hand-me-down,
delivered in the best oral tradition: told to me over a meal, and recorded on a paper napkin. At breakfast with my old friend Irene Sax one day maybe a decade ago—she was a longtime food writer, and my former “Newsday” colleague—I was panicking about my late-summer vegetable glut, and she said: “Vegetable
soup. I make it all the time, freeze it, and eat it every day for lunch.” And then I realized: I don’t know how to make proper vegetable soup. Or didn’t, until then. The extra-easy recipe: in 'the new york times:' ross gay's joyful approach to gardening The most recent in my "New York Times" series that began in April 2020: The celebrated poet and essayist's relationship to his garden is joyful, and he is grateful for every bit of delight it offers. A week earlier: Cornell Botanic Gardens has been experimenting
with sustainable native lawn for nearly 15 years. The grass they rely on as the foundation? A genus you may never have heard of: Danthonia, or oatgrass. The previous column: It's an old-fashioned practice that can bring contemporary gardeners a lot of late-winter joy. How to force flower bulbs (especially in a cold frame or
cool garage or cellar), with Page Dickey. One week earlier: For Jennifer Jewell, the pandemic seed shortage got her asking questions about seed, deep and sometimes unsettling ones. We talked about the wide-ranging answers she dug up writing her new book “What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of
Seeds.” One column before that: I rely on my freezer to insure that I have a supply of homegrown herbs and other ingredients on hand year-round. How to freeze herbs, tomatoes and more. For four garden seasons, I've interviewed gardening experts for my In the Garden column in the Times, and they interviewed me, too, in a Q&A on page A2 of the paper. The link is
here, with links to all my past columns as well. recap: plans for stashing tender plants It is not time quite yet here for what I call
the mad stash, storing those non-hardy plants for the winter that we wish to keep alive for another year of service. But it is time to make some plans to do just that. Marianne Willburn, author of “Tropical Plants and How to Love
Them” and a serious mad stasher, is here to help us puzzle out what goes where for best results. Even how to make our houseplants happiest all winter (like the ones at her place, above). We’ve both been stashing many kinds of investment plants over many years, with wins and losses along the way. So we wanted to compare notes to help you fine-tune your strategic plans for adapting spots in the house, cellar, garage, wherever, to improve your overwintering results with
tender treasures. Plus: Enter to win a copy of the book. easiest skins-on applesauce to can or freeze My family calls it "pink 'po sauce," with the
“po” representing the last syllable of the word “apple,” the way my beloved niece pronounced it when she was small. One fall weekend, as I hurtled by to give a lecture out their way, I met my brother-in-law at Exit 9 off I-90 to deliver the first load of Pink ‘Po Sauce (aka easy skins-on pink applesauce) that started life on my century-old trees. Sigh of relief: 11 quarts and 5 pints moved from my freezer to theirs. Another day that year, my friend Katrina filled the back of her car with my apples, heading home to cook them up, and many neighbors have been the recipients of boxes of apples, apples and more apples, too. It’s applesauce time, and here’s how that
goes. |
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