After a couple weeks of summer-like weather, the wind is turning south today. I’m not looking forward to the cold in our unheated uninsulated shed, but even a change in the weather is exciting as the days seem to flow one into the other without any of our usual time markers.
weather
Pandemic Poetry: Poem of the Day, 7 April 2020
I’m thankful for the warm weather we’ve been having. Life in the shed is just fine if the sun is out.
Pandemic Poetry: Poem of the Day, 6 April 2020
The forecast is for sun, but this morning dawned foggy and damp.
Pandemic Poetry: Poem of the Day, 3 April 2020
Another foggy damp morning here. The light from streetlights and spilling out of people’s windows looks solid in the fog.
Pandemic Poetry: Poem of the Day 27 March 2020
A rainy, blustery morning today. I put up my poem in wet semi-darkness. A perfect day for staying at home with a cup of tea.
Cilantro Security
Cilantro (aka coriander) is an acquired taste. When I first had it, I thought it tasted like soap. Now I love it. Which makes this year’s crop all the more welcome, because we’ve been without it for several months.
Cilantro will grow year-round here, although during our dry summers, it bolts quickly. Usually I plant a spring crop and let it bolt and re-seed itself for a fall/winter crop of volunteer plants. Unfortunately, last spring’s crop was badly stunted by aphids and a hot dry spell, and it didn’t set seed.
So we went all winter without cilantro—a sad state, when winter is the time for chilis and bean dishes that we normally flavour with cilantro.
It’s hot and dry again, but I’ve taken precautions against another cilantro failure. I planted two crops several weeks apart, and I’m watering them well. Hopefully we’ll be back to a continuous cilantro supply this year.
Garden Gifts
Our house went on the market today. We’ve spent the past several weeks painting, tidying and weeding to make the place look its best. On Sunday evening, after a hard three days of work, I wandered around the yard. The air was sultry—oppressive heat slowly giving way to the comfort of a lazy summer evening. The freshly cut grass was soft and cool underfoot as I padded past purple baubles of blooming chives, snow-in-summer spilling onto the path in frosty profusion, multi-hued pansies nodding in the light breeze, and pale irises standing tall. I strolled the rose garden, only just beginning to flower. A lone peony sported golf-ball-sized burgundy buds. The last of the pittosporum flowers perfumed the air.
In short, the garden was at ease in its lush maturity—the result of fifteen years of hard work, on top of the botanical history of a hundred years of landscaping. I thought of all the plants the property had gifted us with—roses, dahlias, naked ladies, camellias, irises, and others. Discovered among the overgrown gardens, often nearly choked out by weeds, the plants responded well to love and care, and formed the core of what we’ve done with the yard.
Then I thought of our new property, a bare paddock, its botanical history limited to pasture grasses and clover. There will be no gifts, discovered among the weeds. No heirloom plants needing only a little love to bloom and thrive.
The thought was depressing as I strolled the mature plantings we will leave behind. Starting from nothing but rock and clay is a daunting prospect.
But this property will gift us plants yet again—hundreds of seedlings, cuttings, bulbs and divisions sit in pots, awaiting transport to their new home. One day, they will be the botanical history of the new property. One day, I will stroll among them in contemplation, just as I did among their predecessors at the old house.
First Day of Spring
Last Sunday was the first day of spring, and it was as if all of nature wanted us to know it.
The day dawned crisp and sunny, and by mid-afternoon the temperature had climbed to a summer-like 27ºC.
The weeds in the garden seemed to have put on extra growth, and I hauled almost a dozen wheelbarrow loads of them to the compost pile as I began preparing the garden for the upcoming planting season.
Daffodils, snowdrops, and bluebells nodded in the sunshine, carpeting the yard with colour.
Willows everywhere suddenly burst into leaf, the fresh green of their branches like a beacon.
Bees hummed in every flower, and midges danced in lekking storms that sounded like rain against the windows.
We spent the day outdoors, threw open the windows, and drank in the warmth, going inside only when hunger drove us in to dinner.
Even the sun seemed to linger, painting the evening with golden streaks of promise.
Winter Losing its Grip
When I returned a tool to the equipment hire place yesterday morning, the owner asked if I thought we’d have snow.
At school, the staff were buzzing with the possibility of a snow day. “Don’t tell the kids!” one whispered. “They’ll go crazy.”
The weather forecast is for a southerly storm to blow in on Wednesday. Depending on which forecast you look at, we might have snow to 400 metres or to near sea level.
But regardless of the forecast, it’s beginning to feel like spring.
Yesterday evening when I stepped out to close the chicken house, lambs bleated in nearby paddocks, starlings warbled in the treetops, and blackbirds fought over new territories.
The sky was still light, though it was nearly six o’clock, and the air was soft and full of promises.
Today I am comfortable in a t-shirt, and have opened the doors and windows to warm up the house in the winter sunshine.
Whether it snows tomorrow or not, winter has lost its grip. Spring is on its way.
Gifts from the freezer
With love, from the freezer.
Our apple trees struggle against the macrocarpa hedge shading them and sucking away nutrients and moisture from the soil. I’m sure many years ago, when a previous owner planted them, they seemed far enough from the hedge, but today, without aggressive pruning, the hedge would engulf the fruit trees. So we rarely get large harvests of apples, and most years we eat them all fresh, long before they go wrinkly with age.
This past summer was different. We had extra apples after accepting a big box of them from a friend, and then realising our trees held more than we thought. There was no way we were going to use all of the apples before they dried out, nor did I want the kitchen and dining room littered with baskets and bowls of apples for months. I filled the last of our empty canning jars with applesauce and still had more fruit. So I made a large quantity of apple pie filling, cooking the apples just enough to soften them slightly and release some of their juices. Then I froze it in pie-sized quantities. We enjoyed apple pie all through autumn.
We thought we’d finished the apple pie filling off, but the other day, my husband found a container of it on the bottom of the freezer. To find that pie filling on a cold and rainy weekend was a beautiful gift. A gift from our summer selves and from the freezer itself, which hid it until the need was greatest.
So while rain streamed down the window panes, I made a pie, filling the house with the warming smell of baking cinnamon, apple and pastry. We enjoyed the pie warm with whipped cream by the fire on a dreary night—a wintertime decadence to make us forget the damp and cold.
Thank you, freezer, for the wonderful winter gift.
Robinne Weiss 