Onion Skins Very Thin, Mild Winter Coming In

Photo Art of an onion by Claire Staples

When harvesting onions, you wait for them to weaken at the top of bulb and flop over onto the ground. When the scape of the onion has drooped to the side, you know it is ready to be harvested. Afterwards, the onions are moved to the greenhouse. The temperature of the greenhouse reminds me of hot yoga class, but it is appropriate for the onions. Cutting the onions involves snipping off the tops of the onions so that they do not mold. All you can hear is snip, snip, of the scissors and a rustle of the dried tops, sometimes a little crinkle of the outer skin of the onion. After snipping them we put them in harvest crates, only two layers to allow the onions to breathe. Sometimes it would smell like onions when snipping off the tops, but mostly it was not strong enough to make you tear up.  I discovered, according to the onion association, that sulfuric compounds in onions are what make you tear up. But crying is not the only cultural association with onions, they are also fabled in an old English rhyme to predict the coming winter: “Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in. Onion skins very tough, coming winter very rough.” I think our onion skins our thin, but this could be wishful thinking!

Similar to onions, when you gather sunflower seeds, you should wait for the sunflower to flop over and for the petals to fall off. One interesting fact that Joanna shared about flowers is that there are ascetic choices to be made when making a bouquet of flowers but that it is also important to cut flowers at the right time in their growth in order to make them  last longer in bouquets. If you cut flowers when they are still closed they will bloom in the vase. For instance, when cutting sunflowers, the flowers will last the longest in a vase if they have a mostly flat seed section in the sunflower (as you can see in the photo). The seeds in the middle are flat before they start to grow and as the sunflowers begin to mature the middle of the flower will become more rounded.

 I think the sunflower's height is what makes it so exciting to witness. I like to imagine it counting "the steps 0f the sun" as William Blake puts it in Ah! Sunflower— 

Ah Sunflower weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;