Sticking with Eden - What the Garden Has to Say

On a cloudy day, the garden is all about color. What was brown is now a slick mercurial black; what was white shines like a full moon and what was coming in green is an eyeful of jewels. Nothing sates the l

over of green more than a rainy day in spring. Blue skies and hot suns may please the eye and warm the skin but they distract from the green, the emerald, the grass and leaf and wet wet weeds. 

Early in the season, as we still are despite those few weeks of warm temps, my friends, L&S, have an abundance of winter greens in the form of crinoline-stiff kale. So much, in fact, that I'm not sure they know what to do with it all. I cruised the Web and found that kale, which is so full of vitamins  you can taste them going down, is a staple in many Italian and other Mediterranean soups, coconut-based soups. It's also good with goat cheese. DP (pictured) sauted a mess of the stuff in garlic, butter and oil for a bite of vitamins and iron more virtuous than pleasing (though they were very good while hot). Here's my favorite recipe, though: Kale Chips.  Baking kale leaves in oil and salt would go a long way toward

 offloading, I mean, sharing, such an abundance. 

We picked very ready spinich, lettuce and an assortment of salad greens L. called 'mescalin' but I don't think that's quite it. It's a delicious mix of soft, crunchy, tangy, bitter and sweet greens. And just look at all the shades of green.

We would not be human, I think, if we hadn't wondered how the carrots and beets were doing and egged L. on to pull up a few, oh at least one, to see how much longer it would be. And so she did pull one carrot head but shook her own head in some disappointment though without surprise. Not yet, not even a stub. But they'll come and they'll feed the family and the horses (though why I separate the two, I don't know.)

On Sunday there was no respite from the rain longer than five minutes so we sat on the porch and watched the fog lurk. I tried to paint the green wall of mountains in the distance and had a great time trying but even for this Irish girl, there were too many to count. Green in spring is like love in youth. The shades and potential for shades are infinite and beyond measure. Best just to  let it have its benign way.