Monthly Archives: May 2014

Like a pair of gophers.

Pascha, poetry, ,

Many people need more sleep than usual during Bright Week, what we call the week after Pascha when the joy and lightness of The Resurrection of Christ are like a wave we want to ride as long as possible. Um…so why would we lie abed? Shouldn’t we be going forth in the power of the Resurrection accomplishing great things?

We are sleeping because we got  v-e-r-y  t-i-r-e-d  during the marathon of services during Holy Week, then stayed up most of the night going into Sunday morning…and we couldn’t sleep a lot extra right away because we wanted to go to the picnic, and Bright Monday services… and because we were high on all that joy. (Also, it’s true, I personally have frequent sleep issues anyway.)

Bright Week has passed, but while it is yet Pascha — until Pentecost — some of us older than forty are still catching up. This poem reminds me a little of me — and some mornings my husband is right alongside, making a pair.

WEEKENDS, SLEEPING IN

No jump-starting the day,
no bare feet slapping the floor
to bath and breakfast.

Dozing instead
in the nest
like, I suppose,
a pair of gophers

underground
in fuzz and wood shavings.
One jostles the other
in closed-eye luxury.

We are at last
perhaps
what we are:
uncombed,
unclothed,
mortal.

Pulse
and breath
and dream.

–Marjorie Saiser

Onions and Roses

food and cooking, other gardens, ,

The ever changing contents of my CSA box have encouraged me to try out some vegetables that are less familiar to me. This week I made a big stir-fry using mostly some of the items that had arrived in the front-porch delivery. I had to fry them in three batches to avoid overcrowding and the soup that can result from that. Beet greens, beech mushrooms, spring onions, celery, and bok choy went into my 12″ cast-iron skillet and a tasty mélange was dished up out of it a few minutes later.White beech mushrooms

The beech mushrooms are darling, something I’d never have invested in otherwise, and perfect for soups and stir-fries. They came out pink after nestling up to the beet greens.

I don’t think I’d ever used spring onions before. I thought they were the same thing as scallions or green onions, and maybe they are, but after the bulbs have grown fatter. This page: “How to Tell the Difference” explains and pictures the characteristics of spring onions and two other allium cousins, including shallots, which also have come in my box three times now. I have roasted them with olive oil and new or fingerling potatoes and they are sooo wonderful. In the past I didn’t appreciate their specialness enough to bother with peeling them.

I did the creamy and sweet potato-and-shallot roast the same night I made the stir-fry. Mr. Glad ate the same thing (with sausages) a second night, and there were still enough vegetables left to make a frittata for a third dinner. One of the slices of spring onion showed its concentric arcs so prettily it was begging for a photo-shoot. P1090735

Spring is obviously the time for spring onions, and also for roses! I’ve been having rose envy along with my general garden nostalgia, because instead of increasing the rosebush population, we’ve reduced it over the last few years. I keep thinking I need to visit a rose garden this month, but today I realized that is just one more activity I can leave off the already burdensome to-do list. Instead, I will take more walks around my neighborhood that is exploding with with blooms, and stick my nose into as many as possible.

rose at nursery 5-1-14

The thing about a rose garden is, you often can read a label that tells the species of rose you are admiring. But today when Mr. Glad and I shopped at two garden nurseries, we saw many roses, and I even photographed one, and did not even think of looking at its label.

We bought zinnias and lobelia, tomatoes and peppers and zucchini. Get ready for more more gardening reports coming your way!