Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow by Tara Austen Weaver Page A
Authors: Tara Austen Weaver
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putting in a Japanese soaking tub, but that was another idea my mother couldn’t quite envision. Instead she had the boxy cabinet ripped out and replaced with a pedestal sink, an attempt to give the narrow room more space. Don was doing the installation.
That’s what was happening when we heard shouts in the upstairs bathroom and came running. Something had gone wrong and water was pouring out from under the bathroom door, into the hallway, headed for the stairs. I grabbed a largebath towel from the top of the laundry hamper and was about to lay it down to stop the flow.
“No!” my mom exclaimed.
“Wait.”
She dashed around the corner and opened the linen closet door, grabbing a mesh bag and turning it upside down, dumping the contents onto the stream of water.
What came out of the bag was my childhood: a cascade of pieces of cloth, each bringing back memories. There was my brother’s old pillowcase with chunky trains printed on it, a faded tea towel that had hung in our kitchen in the country, a bit of yellow-flowered sheet I had stained as a child, a favorite red scarf, the remnant of a work dress my mother used to wear.
This was my mother’s ragbag—I hadn’t known such a thing existed. It was another reminder that she came from a time and a set of circumstances in which resources were valued. Even old T-shirts were not thrown away. I felt a flicker of guilt at the clothes I had consigned to the garbage can. Anything wearable went to charity shops, but stained T-shirts and ripped pajama pants I threw away. What else was I supposed to do with them?
Here my mother was, squirreling them away to use when needed. Not for the first time, I wondered if a large part of our problems in the modern age stems from the fact that we’ve been given so much we no longer see the value in a thing; we no longer know its worth.
In a hardware store a few weeks later, I saw a bag of “T-shirt rags.” They were scraps of new cotton fabric marketed as the perfect thing to clean or wipe up mess.
The two-pound bag cost $16.50.
—
My mother’s ragbag came from the same era, the same mentality, as having an orchard. You can’t eat the yield of an orchard by yourself—even a single fruit tree can produce too much for some families. Backyard fruit trees come from an era of home foodpreservation, of putting up the harvest, of canning and freezing and making applesauce. These days we buy the fruit we need for our lunches and the occasional fruit salad or pie. Most of us are not prepared for a harvest.
I was in a good position to deal with such abundance. I might not have had a ragbag, but I knew how to can and make jam. I had learned the basics long ago, from a babysitter who lived with us for several years. Lorraine had taken the gushy plums that fell on the ground—the sticky ones about to ferment—and made jam with them. Plum jam, from our trees: It tasted like summer.
Later, in high school, I taught myself to make canned treats as holiday gifts, nestling jars of chocolate sauce and jalapeño pepper jelly in decorative baskets. It must have been odd to receive such a housewife-like gift from a teenager, but I had been cooking for the family for years. The kitchen was more my domain than my mother’s.
Then I forgot about canning for a decade or so. College and starting a career left no room for putting up the harvest. Life was busy and full. I scarcely noticed it was harvest until Halloween pumpkins started showing up. My city apartment did not come with a plum tree in the backyard.
Then, while living in San Francisco, I started canning again. The urge came from the same place as the urge to grow herbs—a desire for something tangible, rooted, made by my own hand. I remember the first batch of Meyer lemon marmalade, the afternoon spent over a pot of simmering fruit and sugar waiting for it to firm up enough to jell. It took time, a slow, can’t-rush-the-clock sort of time. It took standing in the kitchen and smelling
That’s what was happening when we heard shouts in the upstairs bathroom and came running. Something had gone wrong and water was pouring out from under the bathroom door, into the hallway, headed for the stairs. I grabbed a largebath towel from the top of the laundry hamper and was about to lay it down to stop the flow.
“No!” my mom exclaimed.
“Wait.”
She dashed around the corner and opened the linen closet door, grabbing a mesh bag and turning it upside down, dumping the contents onto the stream of water.
What came out of the bag was my childhood: a cascade of pieces of cloth, each bringing back memories. There was my brother’s old pillowcase with chunky trains printed on it, a faded tea towel that had hung in our kitchen in the country, a bit of yellow-flowered sheet I had stained as a child, a favorite red scarf, the remnant of a work dress my mother used to wear.
This was my mother’s ragbag—I hadn’t known such a thing existed. It was another reminder that she came from a time and a set of circumstances in which resources were valued. Even old T-shirts were not thrown away. I felt a flicker of guilt at the clothes I had consigned to the garbage can. Anything wearable went to charity shops, but stained T-shirts and ripped pajama pants I threw away. What else was I supposed to do with them?
Here my mother was, squirreling them away to use when needed. Not for the first time, I wondered if a large part of our problems in the modern age stems from the fact that we’ve been given so much we no longer see the value in a thing; we no longer know its worth.
In a hardware store a few weeks later, I saw a bag of “T-shirt rags.” They were scraps of new cotton fabric marketed as the perfect thing to clean or wipe up mess.
The two-pound bag cost $16.50.
—
My mother’s ragbag came from the same era, the same mentality, as having an orchard. You can’t eat the yield of an orchard by yourself—even a single fruit tree can produce too much for some families. Backyard fruit trees come from an era of home foodpreservation, of putting up the harvest, of canning and freezing and making applesauce. These days we buy the fruit we need for our lunches and the occasional fruit salad or pie. Most of us are not prepared for a harvest.
I was in a good position to deal with such abundance. I might not have had a ragbag, but I knew how to can and make jam. I had learned the basics long ago, from a babysitter who lived with us for several years. Lorraine had taken the gushy plums that fell on the ground—the sticky ones about to ferment—and made jam with them. Plum jam, from our trees: It tasted like summer.
Later, in high school, I taught myself to make canned treats as holiday gifts, nestling jars of chocolate sauce and jalapeño pepper jelly in decorative baskets. It must have been odd to receive such a housewife-like gift from a teenager, but I had been cooking for the family for years. The kitchen was more my domain than my mother’s.
Then I forgot about canning for a decade or so. College and starting a career left no room for putting up the harvest. Life was busy and full. I scarcely noticed it was harvest until Halloween pumpkins started showing up. My city apartment did not come with a plum tree in the backyard.
Then, while living in San Francisco, I started canning again. The urge came from the same place as the urge to grow herbs—a desire for something tangible, rooted, made by my own hand. I remember the first batch of Meyer lemon marmalade, the afternoon spent over a pot of simmering fruit and sugar waiting for it to firm up enough to jell. It took time, a slow, can’t-rush-the-clock sort of time. It took standing in the kitchen and smelling
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