Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [173]
Underneath the platform where she now sat earning that title, we fixed up two more nests to contain the overflow. Together the hens had now produced more than fifty eggs. While Number One Mother incubated about two dozen of them, Numbers Two, Three, and Four were showing vague interest in the other piles. Number Two had started to spend the nights sitting on eggs, but still had better things to do in the daytime. Three and Four were using the remaining nest the way families use a time-share condo in Florida.
But something inside the downy breast of Number One had switched on. Once she settled in, I never saw her get up again, not even for a quick drink of water. With her head flattened against her body and a faraway look in her eyes, she gave herself over to maternity. I began bringing her handfuls of grain and cups of water that she slurped with desperation. I apologized for everything I’d said to her earlier.
I was the free bird now, out in the sunshine as much as possible, walking into the open-armed embrace of springtime. A balmy precipitation of cherry petals swirled around us as we did our garden chores. The ruddy fiddleheads of peony leaves rolled up out of the ground. The birthday garden made up of gift plants I’d received last year now surprised me like a series of unexpected phone calls: the irises bloomed; the blue fountain grass poured over the rocks; I found the yellow lady’s slipper blossoms when I was weeding under the maple. One friend had given me fifty tulip bulbs, one for each of my years, which we planted in a long trail down the driveway. Now they were popping up with flaming red heads on slender stalks like candles on a birthday cake. The groundhog that dug up some bulbs over the winter had taken a few years off. I would try to remain grateful to the groundhog later on, when he was eating my beans.
Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of cold second thoughts. Our personal hallelujah was the return of good, fresh food. Nobody in our household was dying for a Moon Pie, but we’d missed crisp things, more than we’d realized. Starting the cycle again was a heady prospect: cutting asparagus, hunting morels, harvesting tender spinach and chard. We’d made it.
Did our year go the way we’d expected? It’s hard to say. We weren’t thinking every minute about food, as our family life was occupied front and center by so many other things. Devastating illnesses had darkened several doors in our close family. We’d sent a daughter off to college and missed her company, and her cooking. If our special way of eating had seemed imposing at first, gradually it was just dinner, the spontaneous background of family time as we met our fortunes one day, one phone call, one hospital visit, wedding, funeral, spelling bee, and birthday party at a time. It caused us to take more notice of food traditions of all kinds—the candy-driven school discipline program, the overwhelming brace of covered dishes that attend a death in the family. But in the main, our banana-free life was now just our life. So much so, in fact, I sometimes found myself a bit startled to run across things like bananas in other people’s kitchens—like discovering a pair of Manolo Blahnik sandals in the lettuce bed. Very nice I’m sure, just a little bit extravagant for our kind.
We pressed ourselves to pronounce some verdicts on our year. Our planning and putting-by for the winter had passed muster, as we still had pesto and vegetables in our freezer to last comfortably till the abundances of June. We’d overplanted squash, could have used more garlic, but had enough of everything to stay happy. The Web site of the local-eating Vancouver couple said they’d ended