Gleanings
Gleanings
I turned the soil in my garden during a sunny afternoon yesterday. The first turn in the spring always assures a few root crops left behind the previous autumn, like the tiny carrots, above. I usually also find tiny potatoes, a turnip or parsnip or two, and a few things sprouting early with edible greens and even a few edible natives are sprouting and greening up. Often it’s enough to make a soup or stew or a side dish, but this year these carrots and a basket of turnip greens were all that were to be had.
It wasn’t so long ago when people gleaned the fields for such things, food stores were gone, and what they found was the only thing available to them to eat. I sometimes wonder how society advanced when simply not starving to death was a daily battle, and I wonder how many lives were lost because only a handful of baby carrots was available for food. I will not complain about how had life is—modern days have their travails, but I have a refrigerator with food, and a store just down the street. Many thanks to our ancestors who had the will to survive.
Forsythia Between the Rain
Forsythia Between the Rain.
A lovely focused light fell on the yard between rains today as the temperatures rise just before another cold front. The spotlight is on the forsythia, those lovely unique yellow flowers so welcome all through March. I try to stay with native plants in my yard, and forsythia is decidedly not native, but I would miss it, every spring.
Today 