Gazpacho

St. Patrick's Minus Five

What we did notice, was the violence of the passing front.

There had been a few days of spring, too few to qualify as a season, then two days of unabashed summer with temperatures above eighty Fahrenheit.

It was three weeks prior to the usual budbreak in the grapevines, but the east-most vines pruned weeks ago in the snow were starting to weep at the cut ends. Phenology, that stepwise development of vines from dormant to first fragile leaves, to full leaves, flowers and fruit followed the identical pathway each season, and annually kicked off when the temperature at ten inches below the surface, reached fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

The storm rolled in, dubiously announced on the forecast, and until the last possible minute the skies were uninformative.

In a few moments of focus elsewhere, the sky darkened to a gray coke-bottle green that anyone who has lived in the Deep South immediately recognized as a serious threat.

I glanced at the clock and had been fixing the annual pot of cold gazpacho we preferred in hot, humid weather. When she was teaching the late afternoon labs at the local college, it fell to me to prepare the meal. A shallow glass of cabernet sauvignon seemed to fit nicely on the wonderful maple countertops my daughter had built in, next to a cutting board of my own manufacture that was strewn with the leavings of gazpacho preparation.

That meant the glass was just beyond the skins of zucchini and yellow squash, and cucumber, and the paper-thin outer wrappings of a yellow onion.

The sliced and diced vegetables went into the bottom of a cook pot just submerged with water and brought to a boil with spices, primarily cilantro and a touch of various ground pepper, black, white and red.

Once the slices of curcubitae were boiled and sliced mushroom was added, in went tomato paste, diced tomatoes and a few fresh tomatoes, with chick peas and sliced black olives.

The volume was made up and brought to a simmer a few hours before the soup was ready as a hot entré: we generally prepared enough for a cup of fresh hot soup, and chilled the remainder for later.

The clock read 6:30 and she was not expected until seven or seven thirty, depending on traffic.

At that moment, I realized I ought to call her a warning as the torrents and frightfully powerful winds hit.

The driveway at the farm was more a graveled downhill lane than a parking spot, and there had been frequent trees or large branches downed in winter.

As gazpacho cooled, I did not hear back from her as to whether she preferred hot or chilled. In thirty minutes and before she reach home, the storm had passed, leaving puddles of water reflecting the passing clouds and sunset.

***
The day before, it had been hot enough to strip down to cutoff jeans. The eight-paned windows belonging to a large peak-roofed shed, or small barn depending on your point of view, had been removed from their casement frames and brought to the house to be repainted just outside the kitchen.

I had disassembled the entire building a half dozen years earlier, borrowed a flat bed and vineyard worker from a neighbor and the two of us had transported the entire fourteen by eighteen foot structure about fifteen miles to our place where I had designed and built a fieldstone foundation.

In its previous life, it had served as a pole barn for DC lobbyist Marion Czarnecki with a small vineyard, then a sales shed for a nurseryman who sold Christmas trees from it along a major route south of Leesburg.

I had been recruited to take down vineyard trellis before the Church began construction on its new building. However, when my wife saw the small abandoned farm building, she insisted we adopt it. Since the vestry intended to demolish it anyway, I offered to disassemble and remove it.

The building with its new raised-seam steel roof had come together quickly once moved, at least enough to shield it from the elements, but there were details like interior floors and hinges on the seven banks of tall eight-paned French windows, that remained to be completed.

The sun, after a cold and icy winter, was delightful on the bare shoulders and arms, and with little clothing and warm weather, the painting could be more wanton than usual.

When the forecast suggested storm, the two repainted, re-glazed windows and a crude but tall bookcase, had been hastily dragged inside the tiny back pantry that now barely had clearance for cats to pass in and out their cat-door.

***

After a late dinner, the usual conversation about the day’s exams, students, classes and my visit to a local estate where I had hoped to track fox hunt club records from the 1930s, both of us fell to sleep.

The following morning, I learned the storm had blown a tarp off my tools left outdoors. Replacing the tarp, the rain was just beginning again, to spatter loud enough to hear on the cover before dawn.

The darkness late meant the storms were not done with us yet, and by mid-morning, it was snowing.

Sideways.

I could record in the running farm journal of planting and work, the day the daffodils opened in 2026, there was snow to greet them…

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