Note for April, 2013

Today was the first harvest of the year - nettles and sorrel for soup. By the time we got around to it, our visitors had already packed up and headed home, leaving me with this fantasy about a nettle soup party next year, timed to coincide with the fresh halibut available at the co-op, and the tulips blooming in the fields. 

We chip away at the yard - Tom moving strawberries, me picking weeds here and there, or buying sweet onion starts at the co-op or bare-root trees from Territorial Seed. I still want artichoke starts, and we are out of parsley seed, the blueberry bushes need sawdust and to be moved to a permanent home. They could use a few friends too. The rule of thumb seems to be two per person, and we have two total. Last year the pattypan squash were one of our biggest crops, and they were so delicious, the start of my newfound love of roasting, really, and yet they somehow slipped my mind completely when I was making my mental inventory of things to plant this year. We'll have to fix that.

The swans in their whiteness are gone now, and so is most of the seasonal pond that took over the potato fields to the north of us during the flooding season. There's a robin that seems to have fallen in love with it's own reflection on my driver's side wing mirror and an owl that I sometimes hear as I'm brushing my teeth at night, and on Sunday a congress of ravens chased each other from the tall trees on the east side of our property to the neighbors farther west, one of them with something small and rodent-shaped in its beak. There are still eagles, though not the convocation that was there in early March.

Tacos for dinner, the kind of Sunday evening meal that lends itself to Monday afternoon leftovers. Deconstructed, spooned into tupperware with rice and kale, it's just some weird bowl of nutrients to heat up in the microwave and eat at your desk with tea. It's actually a habit that I really like, those totally functional lunches. Easy.