Plink and Plum

This evening I sat on my back steps, cracking seed pods between my pinchin' fingers. They crunched and split apart, letting their dark, round seeds plink! into the cup at my knee.

They belong to a flowering plant, something with 'lupin' in the name? I picked them out as a substitute for foxgloves, because Matt was adamant that we not keep a plant that's toxic to cats in our yard. It didn't matter that there's already plenty of foxglove growing in the neighborhood and it appears that the cats manage to not ingest it, nor did it matter that I'm already growing allium vegetables (garlic and leeks) that are poisonous to cats and, again, there's no evidence of sick cats to be seen. But, I've got my own semi-irrational fears that he obliges, so in exchange I found a plant that sends up sorta-similar tall stalks of bulb-y flower clusters and planted them by the back fence instead.

Last year, I harvested their seed pods and stored them using a Hawt Garden Hack that the Instagram algorithm produced for me: Rather than throwing out those little square silica gel packs that come in various kinds of shipping boxes, instead put them into your seed containers to keep out moisture! Reduce waste and keep my seed collections better preserved? Thanks, Quirky Instagram Wisdom!

Except when I opened those air-tight containers this year, it turned out that every single one had bloomed with fluffy white mold-- something that had never happened before and did not occur in the containers where I did not use a leftover silica gel pack. So I didn't plant any new lupins this year, but fortunately the established batch produced another harvest of seed pods so I could try again.

The yard smells like warm plums. Not super strong, but there's a whiff in the air. It's mostly from the ones that fell from our two old trees and are now decomposing on the ground. They hurtle down from the highest branches and split on impact. Normally I just kick them out of the way and let them rot, but this year it occurred to me that I could cut away the smashed bits and still use them for baking, so now I've been doing that. I keep my eye out for them as I water the garden or just have a wander, and I collect them onto the back steps of the house until I'm ready to go inside again.

I sat on my back steps tonight, crunching and splitting dried seed pods while the scent of plum wafted by every now and then. Each little hard seed pellet made a small plink! as it landed inside my glass. Only a couple escaped into the gaps between the wooden planks of the steps.

Inside, I washed away the dirt and cut through the kamikaze plums. I removed their pits, sliced away the just-a-little-too-squishy fruit meat, and added them to the container I started last night to hold them in the freezer. I layered the fresh, juicy new pieces on top of the already-frozen ones. I didn't research this first. Is it ok to add fresh juicy plums to already-frozen ones? Are plums ok to freeze? Will thawed plums be usable for baking or does it, like, destroy their texture or something? I don't know! Maybe I should I have looked this up first. But, too late now. They're in the freezer and their leftover bits are in the kitchen compost bin. I don't know if I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life, but I have been dependably content this summer. Even in the moments when I feel more down, I'm still very aware of my overall happiness. I wish I could bottle this feeling up and save it for the winter. Drop little pieces of joy into air-tight containers for later, snap the lid onto my fresh, juicy wedges of pleasure and preserve it away in the freezer until I need it again.

I'm glad to be here right now, I'm glad to have my fingers full of dried pod husks and wet plums and all the other textures they find in my summer garden. I'm happy. I'm very happy.