Waiting To Ripen

We were waiting for everything to ripen. We waited for the green beans and the peas and the okra and cucumbers.

Now we are shelling peas over soccer games, music, movies, and conversations. The children grab bowls and a chair and settle down. Five hands make it fun and fast and we've put up plenty of peas. Garden green beans are summer food and they are gone before they hit the freezer.

We've tried to beat back the bores but they keep finding the cucumbers. They are very tasty, but we'd rather be pickling them instead of sharing them with bores. I think Amelia wishes Roald Dahl had created a character for a squash bore.

Now we are waiting on little cucumbers to make their way back so we can pickle again. There is always plenty of okra to eat and freeze. We fry it and freeze it and do it all again. William loves chopping and George has hired a high school student to help with the work. William and Tyge are the okra chopping team.

And the basil means fresh pesto with noodles or loaves of crusty french bread.

We are still waiting on the pear trees are heavy, but not ready. We watch for the dark green to lighten a shade and the fruit to swell. It is slow, but we've moved from marbles to baseballs. The muscadines and scuppernongs are hard and tart. Soft and sweet will come, but it's slow. We've got till August till its time to pick. The harvest wave will surge and we will scramble for canning jars and picking containers and wonder where they are all coming from. Now we just watch and wait.



And we wait for December already and again. Wait for belly to swell and baby to grow. Waiting the long 40 weeks that will gift us sweet child. The garden and the fruit and the house and the summer speed by and the weeks tick away. I suppose by the fourth child, the time doesn't stand as still. There is life bubbling and brewing all around.

I have to slow and that reminds me that there is a life begging for the energy that I'd thought would be used to scrape windows, paint doors and walls, and arrange furniture. This child is already teaching me to remember what is important and to not be as bothered about the mattress leaning up against the fireplace in the living room for week two that isn't going anywhere for awhile I suppose. I find that I'm looking for the beautiful instead of anxiously waiting the annoying to disappear. There is such beauty in all things and I often over look it and wish the bad to go away. Now it is a slow wait and a slow love of the transformation of this home and our lives and my growing body -- things creaking and swelling and hurting and reminding all of us that life is on the way.

We are just waiting on things to ripen around here.