Budding

We are having a long, cool drink of spring in Pennsylvania, and I love it. I disagree with my neighbors... The soaking rain, the frosty nights, the stormy black-and-blue clouds - it all spells spring to me. The longer the low temps last, the more I can admire the unfurlings in my garden, and those rare creatures that break out of the buds on Scranton's back alley weed trees...

Crocus tommasinianus

Not all gardeners have room for drifts. Or copses or swales or wealds. Some of us simply haven't got the space.

...or do we?

If you doubt your ability to cultivate a drift, I present to you: Crocus tommasinianus.

This sweet little late winter bloomer sows itself in patches - with grace, abandon, and good composition. All in the space of a dollhouse-sized acre.

Unconvinced, you say? Your postage-stamp sized parcel could never accommodate any sort of drift, let alone drifts (plural!)?

Well then, I now present to you: documentation of my barnyard, against a backdrop of endless swaths of cottony, sky-blue Crocus tommasinianus.

Dogwood bud, with dog

We picked a little pot of flowers: snowdrops, crocus, silver maple, dogwood.

Clivia miniata

My good friend Nannette gave me this clivia three years ago. The clivia summers under our pear tree and winters in a cold, dimly lit corner of Matt's "office," a small, precarious, dangerous perch above the staircase where a paperwork avalanche-waiting-to-happen also resides. The clivia likes being pot-bound and dried out, and I like providing those conditions for it.

Round about mid-February, I haul the clivia off the perch - in a teetering sort of way - and into the warm, bright kitchen, where a good soaking ensues. I put the clivia on a chair so it can be one of the family, and it responds in kind by promptly (about three days later) shooting up a flower spike.

If it happens to be sunny late in the afternoon, the clivia becomes charged with volcanic energy and turns this marvelous molten color.

A Huge Accomplishment

Each winter is different for me. For example, I spent part of one winter on a tropical island in Belize, filling coconuts with rum, snorkeling, and orchestrating hermit crab races. And then for contrast, there's this winter, which I've spent part of attempting to build a staircase with crooked lumber, no math skills, and (luckily) a handy guy.

Or in other words, some winters, my frustration level bobs peacefully in the green zone, and this winter, it's shot with volcanic force into the red-hot-and-ready-to-pop zone.

But today, friends? I really accomplished something...

I put a pony on a petal!

The Shift

It is spring inside my house. Here is the proof:

There is spicebush blooming on the toilet tank...

 

pear blossoming on the kitchen table...

and a dog who can not be caught on camera because she is just a blurry streak, bolting madly for the back door at all times.

The Vegetarian Butcher Makes Sausage

Every other Tuesday throughout the summer, Matt helps with the processing of a batch of chickens at a friend's farm. They call him The Vegetarian Butcher.

Matt has been a vegetarian for all of his adult life, and involved in the food business in one way or another for even longer. So while he has no taste for poultry, he helps with chicken dispatch because he has a deep, reaching interest in food and farming. And also, he just likes hanging out with Farmer Pete.

These days, Matt's vegetarianism is broken by exactly one pig a year. Said pig grows up where the chickens do - on a mountaintop farm with 360-degree views of blue horizon, steep cloud banks, and pasture that is thick and deep like water.

Our friends Pete and Eliza own Clodhopper Farm. Each year they host a gathering of friends called Sausagefest, which begins with an ending (pig's). Pig becomes pork, while men wield spices and knives and beers.

Todd and Pete grinding fat

This year I saw the pig hanging in the back room, and it was oddly lovely. Clean and pink and ripply. Granted it had no head or guts or skin, which I expect makes the experience of seeing it strung from the ceiling sort of G-rated.

In the weeks leading up to Sausagefest, if I notice a faraway look in Matt's eye and ask what's on his mind, he answers, "chorizo." There are recipes going on - adding, subtracting, curing, aging. Little pinches of smoked paprika going in and slugs of red wine coming out. Minced garlic is whirling around in his skull like a snow flurry.

Bacon in waiting

In two days, a pig was divvied up into Mexican chorizo, sweet and hot Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, salami, Spanish chorizo, bacon, ribs, and pate.

The bulk of Matt's share is in our freezer, except for the salami and dry chorizo, which are hanging in the coldest corner of the house, atop the bedroom wardrobe. Sometimes the dog sits in her bed at the foot of the wardrobe, gazing up with longing.

Spanish chorizo and salami curing

You can read about last year's Sausagefest at Pete's blog.
You can find a couple of the recipes Matt used here: Spanish chorizo and pate