I've learned there is an art to pruning, which is probably why it's become my favorite chore in the vineyard. I like helping these plants become all that their genetically meant to be, but not more; grapevines, you see, have a propensity to grow and grow and grow and if you've ever encountered grapes in the wild, you know what I'm talking about. They can become a tangled mess if not given the guidance of careful hand, a taut wire and a sharp snipper.
Pruning is also one of those activities that, if you resist the urge to plug in the iPod, allows your mind to drift. Tonight, I was recalling my sixty-something grandmother taking me off a beaten path in search of grape leaves. The beaten path was Mississippi River Boulevard in St. Paul, where we parked my mom's car, then the three of us carefully stepped down the incline that ended in a churning rhapsody of blue-grey water. The hillside was teeming with wild grapevines during the 1960s, and Grandma, not letting the fact that she was neither homeowner nor farmer deter her, figured the city wouldn't mind us helping ourselves to a couple hundred leaves that would end up as part of my all-time favorite Lebanese dish, Stuffed Grape Leaves (also known as Greek Dolmas).
Grandma was a frugal to be sure. She picked leaves from public land and turned them into wonderful treats, she filled ice-cream buckets full of strawberries at the pick-your-own farm in Cottage Grove, she haggled at garage sales and flea markets and always showed us, with pride, her latest treasure picked up for a song. And as I bent to snip shoots off the lower part of each trunk, I marveled at Grandma's ability to climb over brambles and tree trunks with the agility of woman half her age in search of free grape leaves.I'm sure no one would have cared about her interest in wild grapevines anyway. And like I said earlier, grapes will grow and grow and grow if you let them, and I can't. And so I snipped and pulled, shoot after shoot, some six-feet long with large, lovely leaves evenly spaced. I snipped and pulled and thought about Grandma standing on an incline in pursuit of the same resource that I held in my hand with every intention of heaving into the fire pit.
And then on my way to the firepit, I made a detour -- through the kitchen. It is June after all, the month when grape leaves are young and tender yet some are large enough to stuff and roll with a combination of lamb and rice and tomato and onion and lemon juice. And so I cut short my pruning and headed indoors with an armful of shoots that had been sacrificed for the good of the vine. And then I pruned again, this time with a different art in mind...the art of cooking.
Once all my leaves were cut off the petioles, washed, dried and bagged, I made my way to the firepit with the debris. I'm not sure when I'll have time to actually finish what I started tonight; rolling stuffed grape leaves takes a bit of time. Of course, the effort is worth it...especially when you start the process with fresh leaves.
You can buy grape leaves in a jar and make Dolmas any time of the year. But they won't taste the way they taste in June. That's something Grandma never articulated to me. She didn't have to. Watching her tiptoe her way down toward the river over downed tree limbs told me all I needed to know about the value of cooking with tender young leaves. And here, I've got rows and rows of them. If only I had Grandma here to help me.
