What a Mess

Beloved:

After I’d picked the first mess of green beans from my garden, someone asked me why it’s called a mess.  Several commenters agreed that they also called lots of fresh green beans a mess but no one knew why, other than that’s what my mama called it.

According to the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, a mess is a collection or portion, esp. of meat, sufficient for a meal.  Maybe, but that’s not what my mom meant by a mess.  To her and whoever was around to help, a mess was enough that some had to be put up.  “Put up” sometimes meant freezing, but usually canning.  I’ve canned loads and loads of tomatoes but never beans, and it turns out I don’t have the right equipment for canning beans, nor enough beans to justify buying a pressure cooker.  But I have a big freezer and oodles of freezer bags.

I thought I’d only get that one mess of beans, which we cooked and ate.  But then I turned my back and a whole nother mess exploded on the vines.  I picked those Sunday and put them up yesterday.  Four and a half pounds worth!

I really never get over the miracle of it — that one little seed makes a vine that makes a pound (or two or three!) of food along with dozens of seeds to make pounds and pounds more food.  Someone slightly less enchanted with it all noted that by monetizing my time and labor, grocery store food is definitely cheaper.

Call me enchanted, but I have seen nature’s labor up close, and she does the far greater share, turning the planet around and to the light so it falls just right on my little garden.  I did not do that.  Blowing rain clouds past my place to shower my flowering vines for free.  Bees, hummingbirds and butterflies sent to pollinate them in their season.  None of that was me either.  My part has been negligible since I poked the seeds into the ground.  Which isn’t to say farmers don’t work hard, only that all our labors are in consequence to the miracles of nature.  Great or small, the miracle is worth remembering when we sit down at our laden tables.