Time of uprooting

Dozens of heads of garlic hang drying in the entryway to our short-term summer rental apartment; a place to live, but not quite a home.  We harvested these just before leaving Oregon, a task squeezed into the end of one of those very busy days of packing and moving preparations.  Digging and pulling out of the long beds at the B-street farm at dusk after integrating our 6 hens into their flock, it was the most literal sort of pulling up roots.  Some came out easily, giant, plump heads and thick necks.  Others took a bit of digging; the garlic harvest was an impromptu addition to the chicken drop, so we dug without tools, sinking just our hands deep in the warm floodplain soil in the almost-dark. 

Here in Missoula, with hot August air carrying a bit of forest fire smoke, the garlic seems to be curing well.  The outer layers of skin have dried and tightened to a papery sheen. The roots, curled and frazzled at the base of each head, have dried to a crackle too.

I have a habit of testing them as I walk by, brushing my fingers against those roots that still cling to some small clumps of Willamette Valley clay.  I’m not sure I’ve ever felt a kinship to garlic before, but something about them hanging suspended soil-less in the air strikes a bit close to our own uprooted state.   We’ll have to move out of this summer rental next week, garlic and all.  As we clean and box up the garlic for winter storage, we’ll leave some of those biggest cloves at the top, hoping to find some new local soil for all of us to sink into before winter.