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| Parsley waiting to be planted, violet simple syrup, and sweet potato slips |
Yesterday (when I actually drafted this blog), I woke up early, grabbed my jacket and headed straight outside. I wandered barefoot through the backyard, listening to house sparrows twitter, watching a robin turning up earth, brushing my hands along the cool clover rustling in the breeze, and breathing in the green smell of spring. I plucked diseased leaves off our nectarine tree, pulled up a few maple seedlings, watered patches where I'd planted flowers, tore up some comfrey to scatter around some of the trees as slow-release fertilizer, and savored the beauty of the morning.
I'm happy to say that it was a solid hour after I'd woken up that I remembered the pandemic existed. That's only possible through a huge amount of privilege, but I was grateful for it nevertheless.
More and more I'm turning to my garden during these times: a few days ago I was overwhelmed with grief and stress, so I escaped into the garden and spent ten minutes harvesting mint, burying myself in the scents. I've been harvesting violets. I've been baking new foods. I'm been sitting outside to eat lunch, to write letters, and to read. I've been letting myself be carried by the grace of Creation.
I'm hoping this next month to focus on how I can share the beauty and blessings of my garden with other people. But in the meantime, here's what we've been up to lately…
Making a rain barrel! We'd been wanting to do this for literal years, but we finally got it started! Right now it's connecting to the downspout, and we feed a hose down into the top to act as a siphon, and I can water the yard that way. It's eventually going to be one of a series of barrels daisy-chained together, since a solid rain completely fills it up overnight, but in the meantime, we're happy to be capturing the water and using it for our yard rather than letting it run off into the street.
Learning to make pretzels. I made two different kinds, but settled on this recipe as my favorite of the two because it was easier.
Harvesting wild and domesticated greens. It's been the month of pesto! I "forage" on our property not only for chives and kale, but for stinging nettle (we have a nice little grove going, and it's a delicious mild green when cooked), henbit (earthy and herbal), violet leaf (grassy/neutral), dandelion green (bitter but fine in a mix), plantain (neutral but only tender when young), and field garlic (aka onion grass). (If you want to learn more about foraging in your yard, I highly recommend Eat the Weeds and Grow Forage Cook Ferment.) Put together they make a delicious pesto for pasta or pizza, and I also used them in place of parsley/cilantro in this falafel recipe. I also did a big harvest of our peppermint and chocolate mint yesterday, and are currently dehydrating them for tea.
For more miscellaneous updates, see the photos and captions below. Stay safe, healthy, and in tune with the earth! Love you guys!
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| Stinging nettle, ready to be blanched and put on pizza |
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| Homemade pasta with a nettle white sauce and topped with redbud blossoms |
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| Check out this horseradish! |
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| Our cherry has a few blossoms, so maybe we'll get some fruit! |
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| Ground-eye view of the yard: currant, raspberry, and hazel get lost in a jungle of red clover and vetch |
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| The sunchokes are absolutely storming the yard, to no one's surprise |
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| The kale have flowered! The closed buds kinda taste like broccoli and are good in stir-fry |
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| Peppermint! |
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| Ready to become tea |
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| I also put some peppermint on our front porch because I thought it was the only thing that could survive the intense late-day heat |
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| Strawberry flowers! |
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| Our rye has started putting out seedheads! |
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I'm hoping this next month to focus on how I can share the beauty and blessings of my garden with other people. But in the meantime, here's what we've been up to lately…
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