The first evidence of Spring

The look of Spring is everywhere.  I can feel it best in my bones when I lay down at night and notice which muscles I have been using during yard work in the day.

The ewe tree at the foot of the Wedding Reach of the stream sits quietly on the hill, well established and marking the end of the first path by the stream.  I cleaned the underbrush from it, and checked to see the the wild mint that Mary and I transplanted to the foot of it is still propogating.

Bonnie tells me that the steep path down the hill beside the tree is the one the resident moose takes on her way up and down the hill.

The willows on the hillside are in bud, letting me see which are the ones that need to come out.

Bonnie has taken the new salmon berry growth off of the hill, yet another time.

We are hoping to have only fern on that hill this year.

I was on my knees, looking at the first flash of colour from the skunk cabbage, seeing only the bloom and knowing that the huge six foot leaves are yet to come.

They sit in the cold water, letting it swirl around them, never showing that it might be cold to have your roots buried deep in the rap of the pool they are in.

I watch eagerly for the tiger lilies that are are gift from the Pilling house.

This is my first time to see them sprouting through the earth at my garden.

I am practising my skills at differentiating the weeds from the flowers.

And now I am noticing that pulling out a long string of quack grass can also disturb the roots of one of these lilies.

So much fun to see the flash of purple colour  that comes next to them and then to know that when I get back to the lake, tall stems will be there, waiting for the bells of the lilies to hang down by mid summer.

Arta

The Apple Tree

"removing rocks from the apple tree hole"

Yesterday the hole for the new apple tree was dug.   

David leaped in and out of it, whenever his dad put down the pick axe to empty the hole of the earth and gravel he has been laboriously  loosening. 

Along with Joaquim, David hopped in the hole with a shovel as well, although it was only big enough for one person.

Joaquim accommodated him. 

grandma's gloves fit me best

By the time I got there, Joaquim had already shared the apple tree hole with David, and told his own story about being in the Spanish army having to dig a fox hole and then sleep in it overnight.

They decided not to sleep in theirs.

The clay, sand and loam have been mixed now, the tree dumped out of the bucket, the tree given a snack of bone meal amid the sand, clay and loan we mixed for it and some rudimentary hardening off done with both David and me getting our hands right in there to mix the soil.  

The apple tree has a new home and down the hill a bit, I have two sticks on the ground, crossed into an X, waiting for Joaquim to start the hole for the cherry tree.

Arta

Fig and Fennel Bread

While eating some of the warm Fig and Fennel bread I had just pulled out of the oven, Joaquim asked me if I had a list of the different kinds of bread I can bake. 

“Yes,” I said, and pointed to the inside of my head. 

“That is not going to help me much,” he said.

To tell you the truth, it doesn’t help me much either.  I wondered to myself if I really do have a list like that in my head and my mind began to spin from the most recently made, to loaves I made long ago. 

The Fig and Fennel Recipe comes from Epicurious.com and I thought as I was eating my second piece of it, that I hadn’t made anything quite that spectacular ever.  I am not a bread eater, but I went on to eat three toasted pieces of it tonight after  coming home from listening to live folk music.  As I was watching the butter melt into the crust I remembered going to another internet site where they said they had a recipe that improved on the one at ecipicuious.com recipe, which they thought was bland. 

I am not chasing down the new recipe they refer to – since I thought I had ambrosia in my hands already.

Mary had me test out a Roasted Garlic Bread recipe when I was in Ottawa and she declared that it was definitely a winner. 

The week before, Lisa and I had experimented with Saffron Bread, since she and I had been trying to get a sense of what saffron really tasted like by holding some of it on the tip of our tongues until we thought our minds had a memory for it.  Later that day I read the saffron has to be dissolved for about 20 minutes for the true flavour to come out.  No wonder Lisa and I thought it tasted like paper mache when we were doing our spice experiment with it.

Then I was reminded of the breads we ate last summer:  the Russian Black Bread that had hints of cumin, chocolate and molasses; the Danish Sesame Bran Bread that made the air so fragrant when it was toasted.  

My own personal favourite was the Cheesy Moon Bread filled with parmesan cheese, stuffed green olives, basil, garlic powder, oregano leaves and paprika.

We ate the Country Seed Bread all summer as well.  I don’t know what it is about flax, poppy seeds and sesame seeds that made those “country seeds”, but that bread began to be preferred over a loaf of hot white bread.

If sheer volume of the kinds of bread I make was the measure of what is a favourite, Aunt Erva’s Cinnamon Bun recipe would take the prize.   On the other hand, with Easter so close, wouldn’t some homemade Hot Cross Buns be the first thing you would want to pop into your mouth?

Well, it is hard to make a list of every kind of bread, let alone choose a favourite.  I had four loaves of fig and fennel bread on the counter, one cut already, and when David came into the room he asked for a piece from a loaf that was not cut.  “We all get one,” he announced, “and I want a piece of my own loaf.”

I have never divided the loaves up that way before, .... but why not?  There were four of us in the house.

One loaf each.

Arta

The Steel

Today I was cutting a pineapple and my knife blade was so dull that it took the pressure of two of my hands to bring the blade down.  Now some of that might have been arthritis, but not all. 

I have also been reorganizing cupboards and came across a small steel, 1 x 2 by 6 inch gunmetal gray block like the one I used to see my dad used.

“Does using a steel really have to be a man’s job?”, I thought, after looking around the house for man who could sharpen my knife and finding none.

I took the steel block down from the cupboard and brought it over to the table, with a few drops of water in a small bowl and tried to bring up those old memories of him making small circular motions, trying to get the same grating sound that I used to hear when he would sharpen the knives and the same 45 degree angle on the knife.  I remembered that when he didn’t have enough water, he would just spit on the steel, but having brought enough water, I didn’t have to default to that practise.

When he was finished he would say, “Look, it is so sharp I can cut the hairs on my arm”.  Then he would deftly bring the blade across some black hair that was standing upright on his forearm. 

Alternately, I can see him testing its sharpness by slicing a piece of paper and while I can remember the sound of the tear, the action was not quite as interesting.

I tested my work by going back to the pineapple.  The rows of pineapple eyes now came out like a dream.

David tries pose of Henkel Twins on knife

“Bonnie, I am going to teach you a heritage family skill from the past, if you have five minutes”, I said. 

She and David sat down to take a try sharpening another knife, given that if one knife is dull, there are others around it that are duller.

The only time I felt a little fear is when I saw the vigour with which she tried to test the knife’s sharpness by running the blade of it up and down her forearm to see if she could take a stray hair off. 

No visible hairs fell. No blood was drawn, either.

Arta

William and Kate's Wedding a la Dance!

Borrowed from the Facebook Page of Ed Saiedi, a former tenant of Arta and Kelvin's:




That is as small as it gets.  Here is the link to Youtube if you want to see it there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kav0FEhtLug&feature=player_embedded

Throwing or Putting?

So... at Alex's school today, in phys-ed, the class started learning about shotput. According to wikipedia

the shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" (throwing in a pushing motion) a heavy metal ball—the shot—as far as possible. It is common to use the term "shot put" to refer to both the shot itself and to the putting action.

The record for the 12 year old boys in Alex's school is 9 metres. On Alex's first throw, he sent the shot flying 12 metres.

The teacher says that Alex MUST sign up for the Shotput team on thursday. No surprise there!

You should have been at the funeral

"I love you."

While we were digging the hole into which a new apple tree will be planted, worms began to emerge from the ground.  David tried to pick up one with a shovel.  The tip of the shovel landed on one worm which now became two worms.  Next he tried picking a worm up with a rock.  It hung precariously there until it slipped off onto the ground on one of the first walks David took with it. 

When we found the next worm and put it out on the tarp we practised singing "Inch Worm", that old duet made famous by Danny Kaye in the '50's.

The last worm was a beauty, long and fat, lots of concentric rings around it's body, with that deliciously burnished brown and red look.  As an added bonus, it was covered with fine grit.  David took that worm up to the porch with dreams of getting a transparent bottle for its new home, some earth, a few leaves, and some moisture to keep it alive.  We didn't get that task finished together but it had been thought out.

The inch worm did make it into a white yogurt container wtih some dirt, some leaves, and a cracked lid on top.

The next morning David took his mother to the front porch to visit his pet.  Bonnie tilted the dirt this way, that way, onto the lid, shifting and sifting, until she found a dry, thin, short rope-like shrivel.

When he saw it, his face dropped, shoulders fell, his eyes got wide, his body started to gentley bounce, his face turned red, and he began to cry.  This event marks the death of David's first pet, one who has was now gone to a better life.

Inconsoluable grief would be a good description of how David felt. He ran to his room and curled up in his closet.

Bonnie gathered together all of David's adults to see if any of them could help him in his sorrow.

I told him that 21 of my worms had also died last night.  They had crawled up onto the porch and were playing there in the water the day before.  But this morning, when I took the geraniums outside to harden them off, I saw that my worms, too, had lost their moisture.

I had been thinking about bringing David to the bottom deck to take a look at them, but then, as happens with 1000's of fleeting thoughts, that one left me and I didn't take him on that adventure.

Bonnie Wyora told the story of the death of her first pet -- a slug.  Grandpa Doral had talked to her about her loss and had suggested that she bury its corpse up in the woods.  So David and Bonnie planned to go to that same spot to inter his dead worm.

"Would you like to say a few words," she said to him. "Grandma Arta had suggested, 'I am glad I knew you'." David nodded and said, "I love you," looking down at the earth, fat tears spilling down his cheeks again.

He came back to the house, gathered up  the 21 worms from the lower deck and laid them to rest as well along side his pet.

Yes.  You all should have been at the funeral.

Arta