SAGE IS MORE THAN JUST A SEASONING

On a suitable, crisp, blue-gold October day, I went out to harvest my sage crop. It was a pungent affair. Drying sweet gum leaves and dying grasses added a subtle aroma.

Carefully I nipped off the sage branches near the ground, until I had a fine bouquet. I washed and let them drip dry, tied them into a hank with a twine string and hung the hank upside down on a kitchen door frame. No beams in my kitchen from which to suspend it such as we see in the country magazines' pictures... Wish I had some.

I observed the hank daily, with the uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong, although the leaves were drying nicely. On a better thinking day it came to me that a hank of sage whose plants had been so carefully planted, fertilized, cultivated, weeded, picked and dried deserved more than a plebeian twine string. Upstairs I went, forgetting for a moment at the top of the stairs what I'd come for, but waiting patiently for the brain's microchips to fall into place.

When they did, I made straight for the scrap bag and rummaged around for a piece of checked gingham, green checked gingham to be exact, to match my kitchen's main color.

I ironed the scrap, cut it to proper width and length, removed the twine string and applied the green checked strip, tying a perfect little bow the first time, with streamers the exact right length. This hardly ever happens.

"Now then," I said with satisfaction, feeling that I was having a good bow day. I don't know what "Now then" means when something is finished unless it is "That's done right," or "Let's get on to what's next." It's a long-used phrase in my ongoing string of activities.

The next thing for the dried sage, other than daily admiration, would be to make myself some suitable seasoned sausage.

On the day the first snow flies, I'll hasten up to the store, buy a couple of plump pork chops, put them through the grinder (bones excluded), season the ground meat with salt, paper and home grown sage. Chicken and turkey dressing can be ruined by too much sage, but I haven't yet found a sausage thus ruined for my taste. Pork and sage just go together like sorghum and butter. It's hard to get too much of one or the other.

My little sage patch was just like what might have been a period at the end of the long row of sage we always had in the faraway "growing-up-on-the-farm" days. This lengthy grayish-green row offered relief for all the other garden growing things whose main color was always green. And when it bloomed it had little bluish-lavender flowers on it, also unlike anything else in the garden.

It surprised me to learn that sage belongs to the mint family. It is as far removed from the mint odor as mink oil is from Oil of O'lay.

Mama just crushed the dried sage leaves and stems with her hand and so shall I. This will inevitably leave some little short stem sticks in the sausage which my sisters couldn't abide but which I don't mind at all. It gives the sausage sturdy, chewy substance.

When I first began to read Zane Grey, which was early, and came across the description of the sagebrush that covered the desert country, such plants tall enough for a man to hide behind and maybe his horse too, and how it sometimes formed huge tumbleweeds, I naturally connected it with our garden sage, especially the odor of it and thought the desert must be a very sausage-smelling place. I eventually learned that sagebrush and garden sage are not the same.

My garden book says sage can be reproduced by planting cuttings. I've never tried this, but right now a cutting in a small, soil-filled pot, is resting on a window sill where it will get lots of sunshine. It's just an experiment to see if the garden book is right. If not, I'll have an extra sprig to add to my hank.

I can hardly wait for the snow to fly. In fact, I may not. Sage-flavored sausage, gravy, hot biscuits, scrambled egg, sorghum and butter mixed together with the point of a knife -- ah me, what a little patch of sage can do for one's attitude toward life and feeling that all is well. Sage, it's more than a seasoning.

Rejoice!