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a week of spring: garlic

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Wednesday I just got back from dinner at La Siesta.  I am happily full of a vegetarian burrito, tortilla chips, salsa, and of course SANGRIA (so pardon any typos). It was so nice to have a little impromptu date with Chris. In honor of Mexican food, date night, and a little spice, I’m sharing a photo of my sprouting garlic.  Honestly, the garlic wasn’t in the plan because I didn’t think it would come up.  However, I’m so excited at the prospect of having my own fresh garlic this summer because we will definitely use it and love it.  We use garlic in just about everything.

a week of spring: daffodil

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Tuesday Today, I did something really indulgent and unplanned after work.  I got a facial.  Let me tell you, it was heaven.  We have to remember to be good to ourselves.  That could be reading a good book with a glass of wine to sip, taking a bath with lots of candles lit, going for a power walk on a sunny day, cooking a new vegetarian meal, taking a yoga class, going on a hike, writing in a journal (or on a blog!), or whatever it is that makes you happy and relaxed.  I’m just listing the things that make me happy of course. My face feels bright and sunny, so I’ll share a photo of a daffodil outside that is radiant.  I just planted daffodil bulbs last fall for the first time, so this is truly my very first one to bloom ever. A poem by Wordsworth dedicated solely to this lovely flower: Daffodils I wander’d lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw …

a week of spring: tulip

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Monday I walked in the door tonight and dinner was made!  I have to confess something and you can’t tell my parents:  I love brussel sprouts.  Add a little olive oil and some creative spices (Chris used a spice mixture from Oleana, the most amazing restaurant ever), and these little nutritious bundles taste so delicious (and load you up with Vitamin C, A, B6 and other great stuff). Today (ahem–meatless Monday might I remind you), I would like to share with you a photo of one of my revered tulips.  It is oh so close to blooming, yet beautiful even without the color.  Tulips are like graceful sculptures with their long, sweeping leaves.  Their colors are dramatic and, sadly, short-lived.  I think this is what makes them special and what makes us enjoy them so very much.  They are little reminders to enjoy the important moments in life, even if they don’t last long.

a week of spring: primrose

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Sunday I just spent the last five days in Stoddard and Lebanon, New Hampshire, where the weather can turn from calm to angry in a matter of minutes.  If you can drive there this time of year, you can drive anywhere. In the past few weeks, I’ve experienced getting stuck on a hill after a heavy snow (and driving white-knuckled down steep Pitcher Mountain), driving 40 miles an hour on 89 because of blinding fog, facing both hail and sleet head-on, and inching my way home through a rain storm that my wipers could barely keep up with.  There is still snow on the ground there and little vegetation to speak of.  I pulled into my driveway last night and couldn’t believe what I saw.  Even at night, I could see my forsythia bush blazing and the grass looked lush and green.  Spring, my friends, literally began while I was away. Today, I wandered around my yard to see what plants were coming back to life.  Joyfully, I see nearly everything peeking up with the …

Grow Great Grub

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If I ever meet Gayla Trail, I might just have to hug her to show my gratitude.  I found myself in a hospital waiting room with my father pacing…anxiously…and ready to crawl the walls.  We found little ways of getting each another through those 5 hours, one of which was thumbing through this wonderful book together to pass the time and think happy thoughts. If you thought you were a plant geek prior to reading this, brace yourself.  You’ll be dreaming of warm summer days, tomato sandwiches, and ways to fit in a few extra pots for herbs you may never have even heard of yet (Shiso? Count me in!). Seriously, Gayla Trail has a very approachable way of introducing her readers to container and small-space gardening.  Mark my words, she really knows her stuff.  From inventive ways of starting your seeds to growing your favorite flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit (ranging from pest control to companion planting), you’ll be so ready to go when your last possible chance of frost passes.  Aside from legitimately solid information and …

heartstrings to seedlings

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I’m sure you can tell by the weeks that have passed without a post that something has been going on.  I don’t have the courage to write about everything just yet, but let me just say it has been the most intense and scary few weeks I’ve had in all of my 32 years thus far. Life has a way of organizing and prioritizing your time and energy for you. A few weeks ago, after I read this article, Chris and I sat down to list out some changes we wanted to make.  It is true, you have to make time to make changes. From which credit card to pay off first and how often we’d actually sit down and eat at the dinner table together to where we’d go on vacation this year and how we could afford to start an organic veggie farm in 10 years, we hashed out a real plan of change.  Two days later, I got some news that threw every possible plan out the window.  When something big happens …

cheating spring

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Forsythia doesn’t meekly flower in spring.  It turns from a camouflaged brown bunch of twigs to a shouting ball of yellow.  “Look at me!” it commands.  Against a neutral world of hibernating life, it truly stands out and proudly announces that Spring has finally arrived.  I decided to cheat a little because I’m simply getting impatient.  I cut some Forsythia twigs that had been damaged by the heavy snow and put them in water on my kitchen windowsill.  A week and a half later, I have the happiest yellow bouquet. I also have a red leaf plum tree in front of my porch that has the loveliest red leaves in summer. I clipped a few limbs from this tree, which is nothing but grey and empty right now, and also put them in water.  Just this morning I discovered little pink blooms that normally wouldn’t be popping out until late April/early May.  Patience is a virtue, but why wait?  I get to see these blooms twice this year.

vegan soup to combat your winter cold

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Mind over matter, right?  I’ve been willing my body not to get sick.  From a healing shoulder and holidays to work travel and workload, I’ve been giving myself pep talks and vitamin C because “it wasn’t a good time to get sick.”  Even when Chris, a middle school teacher swimming in germs everyday, came home ill I managed to escape.  Ha–take that viruses.  I win and you lose.  In fact, I was just bragging about my tougher-than-nails immune system last week as I was in contact with a few colleagues at work that had minor colds. You know where this is going.  Wham!  The viruses won and I think they’ve invaded every square inch of my body.  It is the kind of cold that makes you curl up like a baby and whine.  Thankfully, Chris humored me and bought me lozenges to reduce the length of my cold and he even made fresh squeezed orange juice for me.  You read that right–fresh squeezed.  Like from real oranges. When he asked what he could make me …

Carrots Love Tomatoes

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Every vegetarian gal or guy that has any space at all should try to grow some of her/his own vegetables either in containers on a porch or in the yard.  How have I gone so long without such a must-have, classic book?  This rare treasure among a sea of gardening guides?  Written originally in 1975 and updated in 1998, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening , published by the well-respected Storey Publishing, should be the bible which we all refer to when deciding where to thoughtfully place each plant in our garden.  Who knew that beans and onions would hinder the growth of one another?  And how did Louise Riotte know that planting celery near cauliflower would deter the white cabbage butterfly?  There are no flashy photographs in this book nor dreamy prose.  Yet there is such a wealth of information here dispersed among simple and informative drawings.  If only I had known last year that dill may affect carrot growth in a negative way, I may have ended up with carrots that weren’t the size …

love and delphinium

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Yesterday the touch of the frolicsome breeze seemed harsh, my beloved, and the sun’s beams seemed weak, a mist hid the face of the earth, and the waves of the ocean roared like a tempest. I looked all about me, but saw naught but my own suffering self standing by my side, while the phantoms of darkness rose and fell around me like ravenous vultures. But today Nature is bathed in light, and the roaring waves are calm and the fogs are dispersed.  -from the passage “Resurrection” in The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran This week has not been a good one.  In fact, the last few weeks have been full of fog and rough waves.  Work, sleep, health, guilt, work, stress, late, cold, obligation, forgetting, fears, thoughts, hurry, work.  Sometimes life seems to be moving so fast and racing thoughts fly by so quickly that we are lucky to be able to reach out to grab hold of one to focus on. Get an oil change, clean the house, make dinner, get the project done, …