Naomi to the rescue

I had hoped that Naomi would have a chance to appear somewhere in my blog. She was the friend who helped me on the day I had to dig up my garden at my old apartment. She had planned to be my assistant with the garden this summer, and helped out back in May with the big planting. There are patches of violets on the side of my house which she lovingly planted while Josh and I were disagreeing over where to plant what in the vegetable garden. She did not end up spending as much time in the garden over the rest of the summer, however. Unfortunately, she lost her oldest, dearest friend after a terrible struggle with cancer. Clearly, her energies were needed elsewhere.

This week, Josh started working on a job site out of town. Suddenly I have become a single parent, at least from Sunday to Thursday. I scrambled to clear my agenda of all unessential activities because my back up help (parents, brother) happened to be on vacation this week. I had one commitment which I could not postpone this evening, and needed help. Although individually, each of my kids are pretty good at fending for themselves, when left together unsupervised, pandemonium ensues. Enter Naomi, who agreed to a fun evening of homework supervision, pizza and refereeing.

When I asked her to help out, I had not checked the weather reports for the week. Once I did, I discovered that the temperatures would be dropping down to zero and below as of tonight. I have diligently been picking any tomato or pepper that have the slightest hint of colour to allow to ripen indoors, but as it was supposed to be sunny, I let the green ones keep going just in case they would catch enough sun to start to ripen. Some did, so I feel justified in my choice. I kept hoping for a sudden turn in the weather and a delay of the frost. This morning, I checked the weather and sure enough, nothing had changed. Today was the day to harvest or lose everything. I called Chloé, my mother-in-law, who confirmed the worst.

I had ten minutes between breakfast and when we had to leave, and Orianne came outside with me to do a quick harvest of what we could. We filled a couple of bowls with peppers. On one plant, the peppers were so tightly attached to the plant that the whole plant lifted out of the ground. I ran to the shed, grabbed a big pot, plunked the plant in and pulled out four more for good measure. "Let's go!" I said to Orianne, dropping the bowls of peppers on the counter and the pepper plants under my grow light in the basement with the other potted peppers and the baby columbines, and hustling the kids off to school.

Zara had an interview for a high school mid morning today (she did well, by the way). On our way back to school, we stopped at home for her to change back to her school clothes, and decided to take a harvest break. Zara happily helped me for another twenty minutes to harvest peppers, and we barely got half of them. I wrote a detailed note for Naomi, asking her to have the kids work with her to harvest the rest of the tomatoes and peppers, and to cover the remaining unripe squashes with a bed of hay which hopefully will protect them from the cold for long enough for them to ripen.

I called home at 5 o'clock, just before my meeting started. The kids had forgotten the plan, Naomi had not seen the note. She looked for it and read it while I was on the phone. Poor Naomi had not anticipated outdoor activities (it was cold) and was out in the garden with no jacket for an hour. The girls worked hard. When I got home, the dining room was full of bowls, baskets, colanders. Hundreds of green tomatoes and green peppers and green hot peppers. I am anticipating hot sauce, fried green tomatoes, green tomato chutney, pickled green tomatoes. Naomi finally had her moment of glory in my garden story. She saved the tomatoes and peppers.