Asparagus

You have to wait three years for asparagus.  If you grow it, that is.  It is an exercise in patience.  Our original garden (when my late husband was the gardener) had asparagus, but when we installed an inground pool, that garden was gone.  And we didn't plant asparagus again.  It was always, "Well, ya gotta wait three years, so why bother?"  Obviously, if we had bothered, I'd be enjoying asparagus these last many years!

When I demo'd the pool and put in raised beds, I planted asparagus.  And this is the third year!  I am eagerly looking forward to asparagus risotto, asparagus soup, and just plain old asparagus.

If you look at the picture, you can see the beautiful, thick asparagus spear on the left, which I will be picking in a day or two.  On the right is a new shoot, obviously not ready for harvesting.  Patience, remember?

I read an article that came through my Facebook newsfeed the other day that suggested asparagus can cure cancer.  Now, this makes me a bit angry.  Yes, it is true that asparagus is good for you.  It is healthy and you should be eating it, especially now, in the spring.  But does it cure cancer?  Tell that to the people who lost loved ones to cancer, whether or not those loved ones ate asparagus.  The response is either, "Well, it didn't work for my husband" or "You mean he'd still be alive if I'd fed him asparagus?"  Neither of these responses will make anyone happy.

So this is what I've harvested so far.  And in case you don't know, this is what you do with an asparagus stalk:  gently bend the stalk and it will naturally break at the point where edible meets reedy.  So put down the knife and let nature do its thing.  These slight stalks are edible, and once I've gathered a few more in the coming days, I will have myself an asparagus feast.

I haven't even tasted my third-year asparagus yet, but I am already in love with the anticipation of it.  After all, I have waited three years to fall in love.
 

Cheese and Crackers

. . . and wine.

Everyday, around four or five o'clock, I take a break from whatever chore I am in the midst of and have my own little happy hour.  It is very informal, usually occurring at my computer desk.  The essentials are Chardonnay and a snack, either pistachios or cheese and crackers.  Today, the pistachios were gone, so it was cheese and crackers.  Specifically, white cheddar cheese and Triscuit Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil crackers.  Break the crackers into thirds and cut the cheese into very small pieces so I can stretch out the time that I get to enjoy them.  (I am not as conservative with the wine.)

It's a ritual.  It marks a place in the day, a place where I have accomplished something that warrants a break.  It is that place where I can pat myself on the back and say, "Good job!  You tilled the garden beds/cleaned up the perennial gardens/built that stone wall/did all the laundry/paid all the bills/wrote a poem/changed the cat litter/painted that furniture/renewed your donotcall status/wrote a letter to the editor.  Whatever it was, it deserves cheese and crackers.  And wine.

It is usually at this time that I write my daily post for this blog.  So what could be conceived as a chore becomes, instead, an extension of the HAPPY hour!

As the weather gets warmer, my cheese-and-cracker time will move to the front porch, where the late afternoon sun will decorate the porch swing such that my cat will join me in a contemplative hour of appreciation for this home in the country.  Either the blog post will have already been written or it will await my return to the computer.  Which one, it remains to be seen.  Either way, I will have my cheese and crackers at the appropriate time.  Because ritual is ritual, and I will not mess with that.

Now go pour yourself a glass, open the box of crackers, slice the cheese, and start your blog.  Make your own ritual.

Changes

Change is hard.  (But not always.)

I have always been a strong believer in the adage You gotta love your space.  Actually, that's not an adage; I think it's just something I say.  It has always been important to me to live in a space that I find visually appealing, but that doesn't mean hiring an interior decorator or purchasing expensive furniture.  It means creating an environment where the colors are comforting and the arrangement of pieces is appealing to the eye.  But like anything else, a stagnant decor can be less than inspiring.  So I like to change it up every once in awhile, make it new again.

Maybe it's obsessive-compulsive, but I change my dishes every season.  Yes, that's right.  I have spring/summer dishes (bright, colorful flowers), autumn dishes (leaves and berries), Christmas dishes (subtle; no Santa Clauses), and winter dishes (my favorite, in blue and silver on white).  Changing these dishes alters my mood and helps me embrace the changing weather as well as the shift in food preferences.  Salads give way to soups, and I have the dishes to accommodate the change!

But I also change window treatments, pillows, seat cushions, placemats, and bedding with the seasons.  Today, I changed out my bedroom, putting away the dark and heavy cranberry drapes and comforter for cream and mauve valances and an ivory duvet cover.  And just like that, my bedroom retreat goes from cozy winter into light and airy spring.  I find myself standing in the doorway, taking in the changes, and feeling unburdened and (dare I say it?) optimistic.  Within the next week, my windows will add a brilliant green to my color scheme, adding even more spring to my decor.  I can't wait until it's warm enough to open the windows!

So change can be good.  It allows me to fall in love with my space again.  Talk about a mood enhancer!  What have you changed lately?

Fallen Branches

I am hoping that by the end of this post, I will have found a reason to fall in love with all the tree branches that I gathered today.  This is just one of three piles of branches that I amassed:

We all know it was a rough winter for humans.  But it was rough on the trees, too.  The collateral damage was evident all over my property.  To make matters worse, over the last few years, I'd built up piles of stray twigs and branches just beyond the stone walls that define my hosta and fern beds, and now it was time to pay for my mistake.  The piled up branches had risen in volume, creating an eyesore.  Time to take it down.

May the Fourth be with me!  I dressed in long pants, long sleeves, high boots, work gloves, and a hoodie to brave the wilderness.  Putting aside my fear of snakes and ticks (and other things with a k in them), I began moving branches, limbs, and dead trees as far out into the woods as I could navigate.  This meant being continually slapped in the face by the unwieldy boughs of the spindly bushes that insist on growing wherever they please.  But after a few hours, my cleanup was paying off.  The stone wall was visible again.  And I'd only nearly impaled myself once.

So what do I love about these piles of sticks?  Well, I love that I live in a place that has them.  I cannot imagine living where there are no trees.  And I love that woods surround my property and that I can walk in them at will.  And I love that my piles of branches might become home to some little critters . . . even if they are snakes.

Birdsong

Unless I need to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to get to the airport, I do not use an alarm clock or any other wakening device.  Well, wait . . . perhaps my cat can be considered a wakening device when she asks to go out in the wee hours.  But my preferred method of waking up, other than "waking with the light," is birdsong.  The volume on this music is increasing daily, but other than the squawking of the crows and bluejays, it's all melodious and dreamy, a beautiful way to greet the day.

My daughter, the birder, could probably identify all the birds in the choir, but I only know a few.  The wrens amaze me with their soprano.  How so much sound can come out of those tiny bodies is just stunning.  The mournful coo of the dove is another bird sound that is easily identifiable.  This spring, I am noticing more mourning dove couples on my property, nesting in the rhododendron and a large pine tree.  Their ooOOoo . . . oo, oo, oo is haunting and soulful.  The sound sends me back to childhood, with a snippet of memory of me sitting on the front porch, listening to the cooing and recognizing that it matched my mood.  It was a precocious understanding of the loneliness of self.

But the sad sound of the doves is more than forgiven with the joyful chirp of the wrens.  I have four little birdhouses that the wrens called home two summers ago.  Despite my meticulous cleaning out of the houses last spring, no wrens moved in.  I am hopeful that they will move back in this spring to amuse me with their comings and goings, ever singing as they go about their homemaking and parenting, despite the watchful eyes of my cat.



So I am in love with birdsong, a love that will still be strong many months from now.  Good morning!

Forsythia

What else is there to say?

Well, apparently, I need to say something, or I will be kicking myself for cheating on this assignment.

Despite the fact that I have always loved forsythia (I even love saying the word), I have never, ever had a forsythia bush on my property.  Which doesn't mean I didn't want to.  The time for planting forsythia seems to coincide with the financial recovery from heating oil bills, income taxes due, and property taxes pending.  So to spend large amounts of money on enough forsythia plants to line the border of my property has always been a no-go.  Hindsight is always informative:  if I'd planted just one forsythia a year, I would now have a resplendent border of joyous yellow flowers.  Or, if I was more ambitious at this time of year, I would have rooted some forsythia cuttings years ago and would now be standing back, admiring the blast of springtime hope that is forsythia.  But April and May are so full of garden and yard duties, I have resisted foresight.  My bad.

No matter.  It seems that everyone else has forsythia, and all I have to do is take a ride to anywhere, and I will be treated to a brilliant display of yellow.  The picture above was taken on my drive home from meeting my friend Nora for dinner.  I just pulled over, pointed my little camera, and the forsythia was mine.

How can anyone not fall in love with yellow flowers?  Especially those as insistent as forsythia.  There they are, all over the roadside, just daring you to be gloomy.  Look at us! they say.  Be happy!  And I fall for their pitch every time.

Cleaning up

Well, no, I am not really in love with cleaning up.  But I am in love with the results of cleaning up the garden beds.  The sun came out this afternoon, allowing me to spend a few hours on the endless task.  It is mindless work, but sometimes, mindless work is a good thing.  It allows my thoughts to wander while I am being productive.  My cat (the one who did not succumb to diabetes, but instead, seems healthy and happy . . . without insulin) sidled up against me while I sat on the paving stones and picked up leaves and debris.  Occasionally, I had to dig down to get the roots of the incessant clover or put my spade to use in order to dig up a dandelion.  (The clover could rival the NYC subway system in its wanderings, and the dandelions win the award for Most Stubborn.)  But little by little, section by section, the gardens begin to look clean and promising.  These are mostly perennial gardens, full of black-eyed Susans, yellow primrose, thyme, blue fescue, echinacea, ajuga, and things I don't remember the names of because I planted them years ago.

These gardens were among my first projects when I found myself widowed nearly a dozen years ago.  In an attempt to minimize the amount of yard devoted to lawn, I pulled up all the crappy grass and bought every perennial I could find on sale and began planting.  In those early years, I waited patiently for results.  A gardening friend had wisely told me, "First year, they sleep.  Second year, they creep.  Third year, they leap!"  And he was so right!  At this point, they have a tendency to reveal their wild side, so maintenance is mandatory.  No more being tentative when cleaning up a batch of thyme.  I yank it out at will.  Echinacea presents a never-ending problem, as it wants to take over everything.  Although the primrose, daisies and echinacea will not bloom for several weeks, this is the best time for a perennial garden.  Everything is young and hopeful.  And clean.

I have many more hours ahead at this task of cleaning up.  But the rewards are quick to come.  The trick is to get the clean-up done before the growth takes over.  Today is the first of May, a month full of so much promise, it is hard not to be optimistic.  When I was a child, on May first, my best friend and I picked dandelions and violets and placed our little bouquets on the doorsteps of the houses in our neighborhood.  We would ring the doorbell and run and hide, then watch behind the bushes to see the faces on the women who found our little May Day gifts.  Despite the one old crone who yelled at us, we felt good about our springtime ritual. 

My ritual now is different, but it still holds the same kind of love.  It is the love hidden in the plants and flowers, waiting for someone to notice.