{"id":7831,"date":"2021-05-29T14:12:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T19:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=7831"},"modified":"2021-05-29T14:12:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T19:12:34","slug":"trader-sues-and-good-will-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2021\/05\/trader-sues-and-good-will-hunting\/","title":{"rendered":"Trader Sue’s and Good Will Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve got<\/span><\/strong> something for you,\u201d my friend Ann said, reaching into the back seat of her car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were standing in my driveway, a tomato-plant hand-off about to take place. (A lot happens in my driveway. It\u2019s all legal though, I promise.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started salivating. Would it be almond bars? Or oatmeal cookies? Ann has a cookie-baking business, and she hardly ever travels (even from Chilmark to West Tisbury, which is a hop, skip and a jump) without some delicious thing wrapped up in cute paper and tied with a bow.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was something even better. Out from behind her car door she appeared, hugging an armful of flowers. Not just any flowers, but freshly cut bearded irises, the stems bursting with buds about to bloom any second. One already had, and it was truly beguiling \u2013 the color a soft Pat-the-Bunny-peachy-pink with a tangerine seam, the contours unabashedly frilly and feminine. (I hope the bearded irises are not self-conscious about their beauty, but I bet not \u2014 they seem like flirty flowers to me.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ann left with a Sun Gold, a Sweet 100, a German Green, a Jet Star, and a Bodacious, reducing my tomato load to 34 from 39. (Originally there were 40. One snapped in half during the tempest a few nights ago \u2014 the tempest before the current Shakespearean tempest, which has stopped ferries and left us marooned once again. Using a flashlight to guide me, I\u2019d managed to usher all the poor leggy plants into the garage and prop their sodden necks up in milk crates and clay pots, but not before one succumbed to the conditions.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I went inside with the irises and found a pitcher to hold them. But I couldn\u2019t let them be. I grabbed my camera and started moving the pitcher around. I found a complementary tableau with a\u00a0Max Decker painting<\/a>\u00a0and a koginut squash over the fireplace! But I wanted to get the blooms (now two more) up close. I requested the use of my partner\u2019s hands and tee shirt for a dramatic look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next I tried laying the flowers down on wood to photograph from above, but found that those nifty still lifes you see in all of Erin Benzakein\u2019s books (husband Chris Benzakein\u2019s photos\u00a0@floretflower<\/a>) are much more difficult to take than you\u2019d think. And the light has to be just right, which it really wasn\u2019t anywhere in the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nevertheless I persisted with a few more versions (and again the next day with more blooms).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is that I was overcome with joy and happiness playing with these intriguing old-fashioned but new-to-me flowers. I considered what a thoughtful gift the flowers were; the bearded iris only blooms once in spring \u2013 when the flowers are harvested, there aren\u2019t more where those came from (though some do rebloom in fall). It\u2019s not like giving someone zinnias or pansies that will just replenish themselves. Ann gave them to me because she knew I would appreciate them. And knowing Ann, I bet she probably enjoyed the act of giving them almost as much as I enjoyed receiving them. She\u2019s a generous person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sure, they were a trade of sorts, but not in the usual sense of quantifiable value. Here on the Vineyard, while bartering and trading are long-standing customs, held over from days when procuring things from off-Island (or getting rid of something on-Island!) was much more difficult than it is today (unless there\u2019s a tempest), it\u2019s the paying forward of good will that guides these transactions. There\u2019s a ridiculous amount of sharing and giving away of things that goes on out here, because if you take part, the good will inevitably comes back around to you. As a bonus, you\u2019re filled with a sense of belonging to a caring community when you participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tomorrow I will head out to deliver a couple of tomato plants to a friend who gave me her potting bench last year when she cleaned her shed out. Tomorrow night, we join dear friends for dinner who have returned to their seasonal home on the Island, a home they have shared with me when I\u2019ve needed a kitchen, when I\u2019ve needed a place to sleep, when I\u2019ve needed a cup of tea. I\u2019ll be bringing tomato plants (of course) and dahlias that came out of their garden as tubers last fall and were entrusted to me to bring back to life this spring. By starting the dahlias early, perhaps I\u2019ll be giving our friends the gift of dahlia blooms before they leave the Island in the fall. But I could grow dahlias and tomatoes all day and all night for these friends and never repay them for their kindness to me over the years. I know they don\u2019t care, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the winter my friend Katharine, who\u2019s beginning the process of decluttering and possibly downsizing a lifetime of collections (she\u2019s on her third dumpster), called to see if I wanted cooking equipment \u2013 an Insta pot, a deluxe toaster oven\/air fryer, a cast-iron wok. Yes, please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I offered money and she declined. I couldn\u2019t think what to bring a person who\u2019s decluttering, so I stopped at Mermaid Farm farm stand on my way there and bought her a big bag of fresh pea shoots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another friend left dahlia tubers on her front porch this winter for me to pick up. Over the years on this Island, I\u2019ve received gifts of homemade cheese, compost, freshly picked apples, tree seedlings, books, tee shirts, furniture, you name it. And you\u2019ve got to know this has nothing to do with me personally. My friends put up with me despite the inordinate amount of time I spend\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>socializing. (I\u2019m not a group activity person and I get antsy when I feel work hanging over me.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you need a tomato plant, I\u2019m your gal. And come August, I\u2019ll be calling everyone over for cutting-flower free-for-alls! I love this place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More on Bearded Irises<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

My friend\u00a0Cathy Barrow<\/a>\u00a0tells me this particular bearded iris is most likely\u00a0Beverly Sills<\/a>. <\/a>But if you are enchanted by these spring blooming rhizomes, right now Floret Farm\u00a0is offering\u00a0a free PDF guide to bearded iris<\/a>\u00a0(which ironically arrived in my email the day after Ann brought the flowers!).\u00a0It\u00a0includes profiles and photos of favorite varieties and comes with a 20 percent off coupon to\u00a0Schreiner’s Iris Gardens<\/a>, where you can also view hundreds of iris varieties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Visit\u00a0cookthevineyard.com<\/a> and\u00a0sign up for the free weekly newsletter<\/a>. (Something I do as part of my day job.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you arrived here from the internet and would like to subscribe to the Sixburnersue blog, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve got something for you,\u201d my friend Ann said, reaching into the back seat of her car. We were standing in my driveway, a tomato-plant hand-off about to take place. (A lot happens in my driveway. It\u2019s all legal though, I promise.) I started salivating. Would it be almond bars? Or oatmeal cookies? Ann has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[168,181,182,149,163],"tags":[200,124,180,199,201,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7841,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions\/7841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}