Soul Food

It would not be an exaggeration to say that for nine hours every day my soul is wrung from my body drop by drop like spring water squeezed from an old towel.

It's hard to come home and be loving and patient and enthusiastic about anything when you feel like a dry husk, like the exuvia of some animal that has moved on to something else.

I had never really considered the meaning of the term "soul food" before, except, I suppose, for some mental linkage to deep-fried southern dishes (which I never really found very soulful during a brief spell living in Texas).

Then, last night, after coming home from another soul-wringing day, I headed out into the garden to pluck the tomatoes from their vines and pick the peppers, in anticipation of the coming frost.

Our sad, sad tomato plants.

I harvested the tomatoes first, filling a grocery bag with the still-green fruits. Then I moved onto the pepper bed. With each each luscious green chile I snapped from its dark vegetation, I felt another drop of my soul slowly seep back into my body.

C joined me and we filled our bag with big, fat poblanos, and threw a handful of fattening serranos on top (I don't know what became of the jalapenos, but no matter, I still have a freezer full of them from two years ago).

Garden clogs, work pants and tomatillo vines--a fashion statement (the tomatillos should be good out there until November).

Ha! We had finally tricked this glacial northern soil into bursting forth with not brussels sprouts and rutabagas but voluptuous, spicy, sinful and most un-Puritanical poblano peppers.

Ahhhhhh!

Inside, we placed the bag on the scale--twelve-and-one-half pounds! Perhaps a record for this northeastern corner of the world (the farmers markets sometimes boast banana peppers, anaheims, long red Italian sweet peppers, and occasional habaneros or jalapenos, but never poblanos).

The harvest.

I haven't decided what to do with them yet. Another meal (or two) of chiles rellenos, oh yes. But also perhaps roasting and freezing the rest. Or making New Mexico green chili (sorry, Colorado, but your green chili has pork in it) to freeze and bring out some cold, dark winter day when the sun and the garden seem impossibly far away.

The self-seeding morning glories still going strong.