Harvest Songs

Because the world needs more vegetable poetry.

Um... here is a photo of my poem, When the Storm Comes, in my terrible handwriting, lol.



I'll transcribe it later. ^^

Okay! Transcription! With some edits, because why not?


When the Storm Comes

There is a quiet before the storm comes,
when the only sound is the whistling of the wind
as it races across the hills and creeps into the garden
The tomato cages rattle the potato plants quiver
and even the pumpkin vines creeping over the garden and
choking out the onions in their hostile takeover
close up their leaves in anticipation of the storm.
There is no sun anymore -- the clouds have invaded
the sky and thunder echoes through the valley
like gunfire in a war.

The rain comes -- at first only a couple drops
then more until the deluge as lightning
brightens the sky. The rain pelts the earth until
rivlets of water carve through the dirt.

...........And then...
........................it stops.

So we hurry to our plants, praying that the rain
which carved scars into the ground, only to
watch the plants unfurl their leaves, which
during the torrent in which nature unleashed her wrath
have only grown stronger than before.

To Live and Die (and Live!) as a Potato



Transcription to follow later. ^^

Snoink I am a big fan of your handwriting! And I love the veggie theme and how in the storm poem, the scary storm made the plants stronger. :D

Aw, thank you! ^^ I know cursive is not really popular anymore and some people have a hard time reading it, but I kind of love it. (Also, it hurts my hand less when I write a lot by hand. )

And yes! Strong veggies!

Anyway, the next transcription (with edits too, because why not):


To Live and Die (and Live!) as a Potato


To grow potatoes is an act of faith
for you never see the fruit of the plant
until everything dies.

Not that the potato never grows -- it does!
Buried bits of rotting potatoes send out tubes which become
leaves which become great big sprawling bushes
as high as your knee that grow precipitously tall after
every thunderstorm until the whole plant
collapses under the weight of itself.

First, the branches sag, then the entire bush parts as if it were
cleaved in two by an ax. Then the leaves turn from green
to yellow to brown until the whole plant withers away
before harvest season comes. There are red tomatoes
plump on the vine and peppers popping out in earnest and
even the cucumber vines still hang on for life while
the potatoes die and shrivel up.

But it is not time to despair, for when the plant dies
it is not the end -- like gravediggers, we dig up
the rotting plants and find
buried deep underground its dusty firm fruit
which reminds us that not all is lost and
the Resurrection is not merely an idle tale
but an act that every potato reminds us every season.

Your handwriting is lovely. Even if I can't read it because the zoom on my computer either makes it way too small or so big I can only see a few words at a time.

The tomato cages rattle the potato plants quiver
and even the pumpkin vines creeping over the garden and
choking out the onions in their hostile takeover
close up their leaves in anticipation of the storm.

Love the imagery here!

To grow potatoes is an act of faith
for you never see the fruit of the plant
until everything dies.

This is such an interesting concept, and now I realize I knew nothing about growing potatoes lol.

Have I not ranted about potatoes yet???

I will show you my pictures of potato plants soon!

For now... a photo of a poem, to be transcribed later, when it's not so late, lol.

Next transcription!


The Seedlings


How can I express the joy of watching cucumber seedlings
burst forth from the earth and unfurl their first leaves?
Those leaves look like perfect ovals -- hardly like the pointed leaves
of the Cucurbitaceae family. In those first moments,
it is like the cucumber is too excited it meet with the sun
that it forgets to wear the right leaves.

And how can I express the horror of finding cucumber beetles
all over the plant -- chewing the new leaves and mating --
always mating -- in the dirt underneath to lay eggs
deep in the ground so that even the roots cannot escape
the devastation of the plant?

They destroyed the seedlings -- they ate so much that the leaves
turned into papery outlines of veins while the tender leaf was gone.
I mourned those leaves -- I remember sitting outside, squashing
the striped little yellowblack iridescent beetles with my fingers
until they crushed with a pop and spraying the seedling's withered stalks
with pesticide, praying that the bugs would die and the plants might live.

......................And they did.

Their next leaves were not the naive oval leaves of a new plant
but the well-defined leaves of a cucumber, as if the plant had
remembered who it was and grew into something that would stand up
against the onslaught of Nature -- and survive.

Ugh... I feel like I am not writing this right, but it is late so here it is...

Wow! Great job Snoink . I really like all of your poems so far...and your handwriting is AmAZinG :O. (Lot of emoji, I know.)
Anyways! Right now is my favorite The Seedling (great name).

How can I express the joy of watching cucumber seedlings
burst forth from the earth and unfurl their first leaves?

I am not really sure why, but this just catched every piece of my attention. I love to take care for plants, so I think I do understand what do you mean here. There is really something special about watching your little plant growing...Yeah, I am startting to get really emotional about plants.

How can I express the joy of watching cucumber seedlings
burst forth from the earth and unfurl their first leaves?

...and here comes the moment where every single plant-liking person has a heart-attack.

They destroyed the seedlings -- they ate so much that the leaves
turned into papery outlines of veins while the tender leaf was gone.

...and there I went VERY emotional about cucumbers! Which is out of context very random sentence.

grew into something that would stand up
against the onslaught of Nature -- and survive.

Not just an amazing ending, but also pretty deep thought which will now probably hunt my brain for like two hours. Thank you for possibility of being hunted by the thoughts about vegetables and for writing these amazing poems!

Yay! I'm glad you like that poem, Crow!

Another picture... one day, I will transcribe, promise, haha.

Okay! Transcription time! For two poems, because I spent yesterday's computer time happily writing my novel, lol.

This poem was originally written 10/28.

The First Frost

When the first frost hit, my heart was shattered.
It was nine months prior that we started our tomatoes and
peppers indoors when snow still covered the hillside.
We watered and tended and cared for them,
easing them out into bigger pots, bringing them
outside gradually so that the sun wouldn't scorch their leaves,
planting them into the earth and rejoicing with every new leaf.
Nine months -- and then the first frost came
and our plants became like withered skeletons
rotting in the garden still bearing unripened fruit.

And I couldn't bear it -- I couldn't step into the garden until
their withered corpses were buried deep into the ground
and the soil had been turned out again.

Next poem... with slight edits, of course, because I can't help myself, hahaha. This was the poem I wrote yesterday. ^^

Perrennials in Another World

In another world, pepper plants are perennials.
They grow slowly into great bushes where peppers
pop out of the leaves year after year after year
basking in sunshine and heat.

But not here.

Here, the autumn frost kills them and they wither away,
if nature is allowed to take her cruel course.

But we won't let it.

And so, when Autumn brings her chill,
we sneak out into the garden with gallon pots
and tear the plant apart. We rip off
all its leaves and fruit until they look like mere sticks
with bare stems and barren branches.
Then we rip up the plants out of the earth,
roots and all, and replant them into tiny gallon pots and
carry their mutilated remains into the basement,
where they can dream of the warmth of summer
as they lay dormant.

For sometimes to save a life means to tear it apart
until only the roots and stem remain
until the warmth of spring comes
and it can rejoin the warm earth and grow.

"For sometimes to save a life means to tear it apart"

Ow, but also daaaaaang.