GRAPEVINES LIKE KUDZU

Several years ago, a tiny grape-sprout came up behind a big hosta at the corner of the garage. I pampered it, watered it, trellised it, thinking of the lovely swag it might make. A little Rose of Sharon also began to grow in the same space, circumscribed into maybe a 3x3 space by the sidewalk corner. In the ensuing years, I marvelled that the dried, snapping twigs could come back from all the below-zero temperatures, to spring back out, and grow longer and lusher each year.

A wine-store tossed a big bunch-of-grapes-shaped metal winerack on their dumpster---we retrieved it and trellised the grapevine at the corner, and it happily climbed and gamboled all up and down those rusting metal grapes. Now the trellis is absolutely obscured, and the entire thing has made for the ground on the other side of a side-door to the garage.

Though the weather has been oddly mild all through June and July, all the plants in our yard and garden have taken a turn for the gigantic, with the garage grapevine threatening to cover the entire three rooftops like frenzied kudzu.

The long seeking arms grown-past-tendrils are making their way out across the phone wires toward the tomato plants, which are tall enough to latch onto when they get in grabbing distance.

The vine is also creeping madly out toward the back garden, and I expect it to reach the arbor shade before Summer’s out.

I love to watch the tentative, inexorable flow of the vines, those tiny green fingers feeling their blind way along toward support; I marvel at the way they touch, seize, circle, with a single-minded purpose: to get somewhere---anywhere. Sometimes I think I can almost see the movement of the seeking tendrils as they reach out into the unseen space for the next huggable thing.

One of its kin so encompassed the big ole rough pooldeck several years ago that I had to do some chopping every Spring to get the lawn chairs up there. And the original appletree which leaned ever closer to earth because of a steadily-hollowing core, was at last supported only by the fierce grip of the grapevines which we hacked away as we eased her down on her last day.

The "tomato hedge" grows ever taller, and the bounty has begun. These are called “Pineapple,” though no resemblance either in taste or shape is to be discerned. They do, however, have what I think of as “Mammaw Tomato” marks---grooved rolls at the top which stand out at the dip where the stem connects, like a fat fall pumpkin chubbing up in folds around the top.

Cherokee purples and other heirlooms have that telltale shape which says this is gonna be a flavorful tomato, dripping with rich juices, and with the authentic tang of a vine-ripe. Our meals have spoken Summer, at least. Despite all this concrete and city streets and miles of interstate and asphalt, we’ve tasted the fresh and the just-from-the field:

A bowl of Silver Queen corn, bought, cut and cooked within an hour of the stalk. The crisp little silks were a fresh pale green as they fell away with the brush. It was a creamy, rich, beautiful thick-soup bowl, with just the right amount of butter and salt. I had just fried the requisite seven chicken wings to accompany (I fry, and while I get the ice in the glasses, he separates drummy from the radius/ulna pocket of tender little muscles with a quick wrench, putting the fat drummy onto my plate, and the second pieces onto his 0wn. And because his sacred recipe for creamed corn requires a tiny bit of the oil and all the lovely brown crispy scrapings from the bottom of the chicken skillet). They are the "secret ingredient" in his Heavenly corn.

Our supper trays held but two bowls, spoons, napkins. The second bowl was of tomato chunks and seasalt.

A spoon into the corn; savor the creamy rich smoothness with little crisp pings of kernel to punctuate the bite. Then spoon into tomato, relish that taste--alternating the deep buttery sweetness with the lusty zest of homegrown tomato, warm from the garden, until both bowls were empty and Summer's finest supper combination had been enjoyed once again.

Then back outside with a last glass of iced tea, to take the cool of the evenin’ and make the day complete.