I can drag, but the world goes on around me. Patrick's dad is already harvesting his corn. The field next to our house has been combined to the ground. Our view is already so different; so vast.
In July Patrick taught me how to reap a harvest of sweet corn. We, as the locals would say, 'put up some corn'. And this is how we did it.
We picked a whole bunch. Three recycling bins were filled to their brims with ears of the sweet, juicy stuff.
Patrick and Henry went to work shucking the cobs.
I waited inside with a vegetable brush and they brought them in by the bucket full for me to scrub.
The sink was so full. It became a little bit of a game to see who could be faster; me as a scrubber or the boys as shuckers. They won.
I boiled two big pots of water and plunked the corn into them to cook once it was clean.
And then it went into the colander to cool.
There is just something so beautiful about that bright yellow glow of the cooked kernels. It just screams summer and sunshine.
Once it was sufficiently cool, Patrick cut the corn from the cobs.
And lastly into freezer storage bags it went.
I don't remember the exact finished count, but there were at least thirty 1-quart bags full of corn.
The smell of corn permeated the air and made me crave salt and butter. It tasted yummy in July when we were cooking it. But I'm pretty sure it will be at its most delicious peak in the middle of January when the wind is whipping through the emptied snow covered fields and the humidity and sunshine of July are but a distant memory.
I hope this corn will taste just like July.
