seasons

What are the Odds?

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

A winter storm dropped nearly an inch of sleet on us overnight. I crunched through the ice in the dark this morning to feed the animals. After emptying sleet out of the chickens’ feed tray and filling it with pellets, I turned and saw, in one of my footprints, a bright green/blue glowing spot.

Bioluminescence. There was no mistaking the colour. I carefully scooped up the bit of glowing sleet and held it in my hand. I could think of no terrestrial source of the glow. There are no glowworms in my vegetable garden, and no bioluminescent fungi. Besides, this was in the ice, not on the ground.

The spot glowed for a moment between my fingers. Then the ice melted, the light went out, and whatever had made the glow dripped to the ground.

I spent an hour online looking for any reference to bioluminescence in snow, and found none. The only explanation I could come up with for my glowing sleet was that a phosphorescent marine creature was picked up in sea spray four kilometres away, frozen, and then deposited in my garden. My stomping foot disturbed it, and it glowed briefly before, most likely, succumbing to a deadly infusion of fresh water.

What are the odds that organism would be picked up from the sea and whisked four kilometres inland? What are the odds it would land in my garden? What are the odds it would have still been alive when I trekked out to feed the animals? What are the odds I would step on that tiny organism and induce it to glow?

Very, very tiny.

I was given a tremendous gift this morning. One of those gifts that reminds me to always keep my eyes open. You really never know what you might see.

Planning Season

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

It’s that time of year again, when I eagerly await the seed catalog. The garlic has been planted, and I’ve made a list of the seeds I have and the seeds I need. I’ll determine what seeds I want once the catalog arrives.

I’ve created the garden map for this coming season, but haven’t yet filled in the spaces. I’ll wait for some cold, nasty evening to do that.

I’ve been eyeing the garden itself, too. There’s still clean-up work to be done out there, and there are big mallow plants to be pulled (the chickens manage many of the weeds, but they can’t deal with mallow). I keep telling myself it won’t be long before I can get out there again. It’s a bit of a lie—it’s still six weeks before I can realistically start preparing the garden for spring. But if I keep myself busy with planning, spring will be here before I know it.

That’s my hope, anyway.

Winter Roses

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It was -3°C (27°F) yesterday morning, and only 8°C (46°F) in the house when I got up to light the fire. The days are short and often rainy. Nights are long. Towels in the bathroom never dry.

Sometimes it can feel miserable.

But over the weekend, I picked roses.

And I have to remind myself that at the winter solstice in Minnesota, I was hacking parsnips out of the frozen ground with a pickaxe, and months would go by without the temperature rising above freezing. The day my daughter was born, the noontime temperature was -31°C (-23°F). I used to teach snowshoeing. The winter we moved to New Zealand, the ground froze to 3 metres (10 ft) deep–froze people’s septic systems for months. Winter was real and deadly.

By contrast, I have not worn a winter coat since we moved here twelve years ago.

The lawn needs mowing year round.

I grow a winter garden (and the vegetables don’t freeze solid).

I pick roses.

Hard to complain about that.

A Bite of Summer for the (winter) Solstice

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I’ve been celebrating the winter solstice in little ways all week–candles at dinner, an extra log on the fire, sunny-coloured food on dark plates…Yesterday I pulled out the last of the blackcurrants to make blackcurrant tarts for dessert.

I’d been saving them for a special occasion, and I thought the solstice was an appropriate one, since the blackcurrants were picked and frozen around the summer solstice.

Biting into one was like biting into a piece of summer–bright and sharp.

In case you missed my blackcurrant pie recipe from 2015, check it out here. It is incredibly simple, and oh-so good! In summer, it goes particularly well with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. In winter, I recommend a cup of strong coffee, some whipped cream, and a crackling fire.

 

Winter Solstice

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The shortest day of the year dawned as it should,
Slowly.
Night wrapped its cold wet embrace
over Earth,
reluctant to let go.

Mine

Cloud and Fog conspired
with Night,
spread out
between Sun and Earth,
a blindfold to Sun’s brilliance.

What will you give us, Sun?
What will you give us to go away?

Sun lit Fog to blinding yellow.

I will give you Fire

Fog swirled and churned.
Wisps curled into eddies,
turned pink and gold.

I am beautiful!

Enraptured, Fog did not see
He was being consumed.
Sun turned her eyes to cloud.

The same for you?

Cloud bowed and parted.
Day began at last.

Darkness Rises

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Photo: Egres73, Wikimedia Commons

Darkness does not fall.
Instead, rises
from shadows grown long
in the evening sun.
Landscape darkens
before sky.
Dark fills up the hollows,
the valleys,
the chook house,
(where birds rustle their feathers
to let the dark settle in close).
Finally, deep night
Rises.
Not too deep–
I can still see the stars.

The Season for Food Porn

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A spread of summer vegetables ready for grilling.

I roasted the last of the summer’s potatoes last week, and finished off the carrots over the weekend. The corn I froze in March and April is already a memory, as are the cherries, apples and blackcurrants.

We’re getting to the boring time of year, when our vegetable options are limited, and we eat a lot of beans. It’s not a problem, but it means it’s a great time to enjoy food porn. Here are just a few of my favourites.

Waffles smothered in strawberries

Roast summer veggies

Soy, parmesan-crusted zucchini sticks, watermelon, and breadsticks dipped in a rich tomato sauce.

Tomatoes ripe and flavourful

Apricot upside down cake

Homemade strawberry ice cream

Beauty Smacks You Upside the Head

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Today was an ordinary Monday. The weather was unsettled–clear before dawn, then overcast, drizzly, clearing somewhat late afternoon. Nothing special at all about it.

Except.

Except I couldn’t help but notice today the way the sunlight on the Port Hills highlighted every ridge and valley in bas relief.

I couldn’t help but see the lush green growth of the grass that showed off the lingering oranges and russets of autumn leaves.

I couldn’t avoid seeing that the clouds billowed across the sky in purple, peach, glowing white, and five shades of blue.

I couldn’t help but see the brush fires, flickering yellow, their powder blue smoke rising to form a xanthic smudge across the sky.

Like it or not, the absurd beauty of this place smacked me in the face today. I grinned like an idiot and nearly drove off the road.

Of course, I didn’t get any photos of it. It wouldn’t have done the day justice, anyway.

Not bad, for an ordinary Monday.

Geeky Pruning

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The newly cleared path and scalped rosemary.

The job had been hanging over me for two years. Every time I went to trim the rosemary bushes by the side of the house, I found them being heavily used by insects and couldn’t bring myself to disturb them. I finally had to admit that there was never going to be a good time to prune them.

So this weekend, when I found I could no longer use the path between rosemary bushes and house, and the bushes were nearing two and a half metres tall, I decided it was time to prune.

Pruning the rosemary is never a fun job—the wood is hard as nails, and every branch seems to need a different size pruning tool than the last one. To make it worse, this time the job took twice as long as it might have, because I checked every branch for preying mantids and mantid egg cases.

I shifted six adult mantids to other plants and collected eleven egg cases by the time I was done. I’m sure I missed some, but I’ve tucked the egg cases into a cage to protect them over winter, and when they hatch out in springtime, I’ll release them back to the rosemary.

A bit geeky? Yeah, I suppose it is. But there was never any question about me being an entogeek. This way, I get my path back, and I get to keep my bugs. Everyone’s happy.

Lemongrass

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I brought the lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) indoors last weekend. It’s not supposed to be able to handle freezing temperatures. It does, but it doesn’t like them. The one winter I left it outside, it died back to just a few well-protected shoots in the centre of the plant.

Thankfully, it doesn’t need much protection. My office is unheated at night, but it provides enough protection to keep the lemongrass alive.

We don’t use much lemongrass. Though its lemony flavour is nice, it doesn’t have the sourness of real lemon, so I find lemongrass tea too sweet.

However, we do occasionally use it in stir fries, marinades and salad dressings, where it imparts its lemony flavour alongside other, more sour ingredients. We were first introduced to its use in salad dressings by Yotam Ottolenghi’s wonderful cookbook Plenty (which I’ve mentioned before). His sweet winter slaw recipe calls for the following dressing:

100ml lime juice
1 lemongrass stalk, chopped
3 Tbsp maple syrup
2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp chilli flakes
4 tbsp light olive oil or sunflower oil

Place all ingredients except the oil in a saucepan and boil for 5-10 minutes until thick and syrupy. Allow to cool, then strain. Whisk in the oil and toss with your salad.

It’s an excellent way to use lemongrass, pairing with salty, oily, and sour ingredients that enhance its flavour. It’s worth giving up office space to the plant, just for this dressing.