BLOG.JESSIEKEITH.COM: Cranberry & Popcorn Chains and Orange Pomanders: an Adult's Recollection

Working Mom's Garden Blog
Gardening with kids is messy but gratifying. This blog is largely about gardening with limited time and
two kids in tow while fighting to cultivate an unreasonably large garden. Short cuts are essential, weeds par for the course, and mud a given.

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In 1995, Jessie became a Master Gardener, accepted a job as a landscape designer and had a farmer's market booth selling garden flowers. The following year she attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana where she graduated with honors in 1999 with a BS in Public Horticulture. At Purdue, she worked for two years as garden intern at The Purdue University Horticulture Gardens and was mentored by Dr. Harrison Flint and Dr. Michael Dana. She also served as undergraduate teacher’s assistant in woody and herbaceous plant identification and introductory horticulture classes.

In 1999, she accepted a yearlong position as the curatorial intern at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA under the tutelage of celebrated curator and author, Dr. Tomasz Anisko. Graduate school at Michigan State University followed. There she studied systematic botany and completed her MS degree in the winter of 2003. Shortly after graduation, she accepted an internship at The American Gardener magazine, the journal of The American Horticultural Society, where she received guidance from editor-in-chief, David Ellis, and distinguished scientist and horticulturist, Dr. H. Marc Cathey.

Jessie taught horticulture for two years at Williamson Free School in Media, Pennsylvania before pursuing a career in garden writing and plant photography. She began to work as content editor for Learn2grow.com in 2007 and has written articles for publications such as The Old House Journal, The Green Scene, What’s Up! Annapolis? and The Herbarist. She most recently served as one-time horticultural editor for Wilder Quarterly.

Today, Jessie lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her husband Knut, daughters Franziska and Gabriella, two geriatric cats, and thousands of garden plants.

BLOG.JESSIEKEITH.COM: Cranberry & Popcorn Chains and Orange Pomanders: an Adult's Recollection

Cranberry & Popcorn Chains and Orange Pomanders: an Adult's Recollection

I've loads of happy holiday memoriesdad wrangling with the tree lights as we waited in anticipation to decorate, mom putting up her magical lit village scenes, the 12 kinds of cookies and candies we'd make (and demolish) each yearbut inevitably there would be chain making involved, which was fun for five minutes before it turned into slave labor. Piercing oranges with cloves for pomander gifts was another hellish holiday task.

My mother probably believed natural crafts were fun for us kids, but I am equally certain she believed they would keep us out of her hair for a while, so they were thrust upon us. For the chains, she would open a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, put out a big bowl of dry popped popcorn and give us each a fine, sharp needle with a long piece of thin thread with an inconsequential knot at the end.

For self-preservation, children between the ages of seven and 10 must develop special techniques when trying to repeatedly pierce brittle popcorn pieces with a fine, sharp needle or javelin hard, slippery berries. Sadly, I came by them the hard way.

Five useful techniques for piercing popcorn:

1. Don't squeeze the popcorn kernels too hard lest they shatter, forcing you to start again.
2. Avoid the hard kernel shell in the center, which forces one to push too hard and inevitably prick a finger.
3. Wear a thimble (something we never did) or you will inevitably prick a finger.
4. Pierce the kernel long-ways, so you cover more area and finish faster.
5. Tell your mother you've pricked your finger too many times and start to cry (this will end the madness faster).

Five useful techniques for piercing cranberries:

1. Hold them tight or you will inevitably slip and prick your finger.
2. Avoid the mushy berries which will spurt nasty red juice on you as soon as you pierce them.
3. Double ditto on the thimble.
4. Pierce the berries long ways too.

5. Mash a few mushy berries into your fingers and start to cry.

Finally, alternating berries and corn is an even bigger pain, so don’t do it.

Children are much less dexterous than adults, so it can take as much as 15 minutes for them to complete a foot of chain. We were asked to finish long strands, which would have meant hours of sitting if we had not complained so bitterly after 20 minutes or so. Perhaps in olden days, when seven and eight year old girls were expected to complete complex stitched samplers, they could string them faster. But we grew up in the 70s, not the 1700 or 1800s.

Pomanders were gifts we made for our grandmothers and great grandmother. They’re an old-timey craft my mother read about in her Saturday Evening Post Christmas book. The fragrant pomanders consisted of an orange pierced by cloves and were used to keep clothing fragrant in drawers during Victorian times. Over time, the clove studded orange dries but retains its citrusy scent.

To make the balls, my mother would put down a red canister of whole cloves and a large, ripe, juicy orange and tell us to start piercing. Little hands don’t have the brute strength necessary to push a clove through the hard surface of a thick orange, so it would take me an hour to cover a one inch by one inch area. Pre-piercing the balls would have been a logical step, but I lacked the sense to do it because I was not told to. It took me hours to make those God awful balls. I could not push the cloves through without bursting their rounded tops and pressing my sore thumb into their bony prongs. In the end, I think we dusted the balls in cinnamon, for added appeal, and tied them with ribbon.

My paternal grandmother received her pomanders with interest and kept them in a dish in her bathroom for over 20 years before she moved. Every time I looked upon them, I felt a twinge of scorn and their smell slightly repelled me.

Age has a lot to do with memory. My sister, who is considerably older, remembers these endeavors with fondness and paints my mother as the inspirer of fun holiday crafts. Clearly she was more able to do them and had a greater affinity to handicraft than me. So, when it comes to my own daughter, I won’t count out the crafting of edible chains and fragrant pomanders completely. I’ll make sure she’s old enough to tackle them and wants to.