April Showers and Flowers

We have all, human and animal, been enjoying the spring flowers around the yard. These pansies came up near our cold frames.
I believe these flowers, growing on the west side of the house, are called bleeding hearts. (Thanks to Mick, who identified them as "similar to Dutchman's breeches", and Google filled in the rest.) I hadn't realized the flowers were heart-shaped, but it is a very fitting name for them I think.
Gerard loves to sit right among the flowers. One day, Mick came in and told me I should go out and follow the trail of his leash. His meandering reminds us of the Family Circus cartoons.
We still have birds coming to our suet feeder too. The most faithful visitors are a chickadee and a hairy woodpecker. One cold day, we had kept the living room curtains closed to keep the house warmer. But that didn't stop Gerard, who had stayed inside that day because of the cold. He spotted a bird at the feeder, and you should have seen his tail twitch!
The crabapple tree in the front yard looks beautiful since Mick pruned it.
Then right in the middle of all these April flowers, we were very surprised last weekend by April showers that felt a whole lot less like spring.
Yes, that's snow.

Which was followed up by wind-blown sleet.

Not the sort of showers we were expecting, that's for sure! But now things are returning to normal. After the coldest spell, Gerard was determined to be outside, even though it was still quite windy. He very cleverly found a spot in the sun but sheltered from the wind.
And he defended his territory from curious intruders!
The crabapple tree flowers have survived their icy showers, and the tree looks pinker every day.
We are certainly looking forward to the final arrival of Spring!

This Changes A Lot

So, I'm not going to Afghanistan in 2011 or 2012. The commander says I'm not supposed to tell anyone, or talk to the press. The 27th BCT is going as scheduled, but the 2/101 RSTA Squadron is not going, instead an infantry battalion is being sourced from another state to go with our 2/108 and 1/69 battalions. There is talk of the National Guard reorganizing the 2/101 into an infantry battalion, and the fact that we aren't infantry is the reason we aren't going. I wanted to call people about this but there are so many. My mother, at least, will be happy, but I am not. There is a battalion of men (hundreds) from another state going to the most dangerous place in the world in my stead.

News from the Dairy

A couple of weeks ago milk was on a great sale. We already had a gallon in the fridge, but Mick suggested I buy it anyway and make cheese. So we bought it and I set out to make yogurt. I added a couple of starter cubes (cheese starter dissolved in milk, then frozen) to a quart of milk.
Then I heated it up (way too hot actually, oops!), let it set out in the sun, brought it back inside and left it in the back of the stove, heated it up again, let it set...
It spent several days with these non-FDA-approved temperature fluctuations until, lo and behold, it tasted like yogurt! It looked like yogurt too, much to my surprise. :) You can see the whey on the top. Some of the whey I strained off and drank, and some of it I stirred into the yogurt.
For my second batch of yogurt, I just added a couple spoonfuls of the first batch to some milk and left it in the back of the stove, and it was ready in a day! It is delicious with honey (thanks for the idea, Nuccia!)
I can't believe how easy it is to make, especially now that I have the culture started. Mick has challenged me to make more cheese, since we enjoy it so much and it is less expensive to make it than to buy it. I'm excited! It is something I really enjoy, both making it and eating it. Our other current dairy project is a pound of cheddar cheese, waxed and aging.
I think we will be able to sample one of the quarters next month. I am looking forward to many delicious dairy products in the future!

This Week's Adventure

I (Sarah) was driving home from work yesterday afternoon. As I neared Elm Street (where we turn off the main road towards home), I saw a red Saturn with a white rag in the window parked on the opposite side of the road. Hmmm, that looks like it could be Mick's car. Yes, I see the Gadsden flag, that's his car alright. Uh-oh. Apparently, on Mick's way to school that morning, the car carried him safely through the intersection, then stalled and refused to restart. It was a pathetic sight, the tired old car parked along Route 41 waving the white flag of surrender. Mick's dad very kindly drove down to help him troubleshoot and see if any life could be breathed into the poor vehicle or if it was indeed belly-up.
I was very impressed watching them push the car back along Route 41 past Elm Street, so they could tow it straight home rather than continuing along 41 and trying to turn around. (Actually, they did a better job pushing the car than I did driving mine in reverse.) While they tinkered in the driveway, I cleaned leeks that we had dug on Monday.
Roscoe insisted on being in the driveway with the menfolk rather than in the house with me. Finally, with some long-distance help from John (thank you!), the car came back to life! So we are still a two-car family, at least for now. :) We took it out for a test drive, and it successfully carried us up the hill. Roscoe's favorite part was looking/smelling out the window.
We inspected the garden
and Marty spotted our first hop sprout.
The rhubarb is going crazy!
This is a pile of trees that Mick has thinned. The trees were planted so closely together that they grew tall but incredibly thin, and if you look at the grove, you wouldn't believe he took anything out, they are still so close.
Then we dug leeks for Marty to bring home.
We have SO MANY LEEKS. It is hard to believe that they are a protected species in Quebec (where the French poetically call them garlic of the forest). Several patches of May apples have appeared among the leeks...
the trout lilies are blooming...
and most exciting, we have scarlet trillium!
Trillium is such a beautiful flower, and the red are Mick's favorite, but we only saw one or two in our wanderings last year. Mick collected May apple seeds last fall hoping we could plant some on our property, and he has been telling me about leeks and looking for them without any luck since last year. We are so pleased to have these beautiful and productive plants already on our land.
Having dug our leeks, we enjoyed sunset beers. (You can see the asparagus trench, the rhubarb, the row of raspberries, and grape trellis posts.)
A lovely ending to a quite unexpected day!

Spring!

Well, it hasn't felt much like spring this weekend (yes, it actually snowed yesterday) but the flowers seem to believe that warmer weather will eventually come to stay. Bobbie planted lots of flowers around the yard, so it has been fun to see the surprises as they bloom. First the snowdrops, then crocuses and violets. Nuccia, I told you I was jealous because Laura's myrtle had flowers and I didn't expect that ours would. (We moved here in late August and I think we saw two flowers right at the end of fall, so that didn't seem promising.) Well, I am happy to say that I was quite wrong! We have myrtle in the front yard and in the back, and it is all full of flowers.

It is hard to capture the colour in pictures (at least for this photographer), but I discovered last week that myrtle is also called periwinkle. It's such a lovely color (and perfectly matches Crayola's Periwinkle).

I couldn't believe that the pansies Mom gave us in the fall survived the winter! I knew they were hardy (they continued flowering in the fall after several hard frosts) but I didn't expect to see them again this spring!


They have survived Gerard's garden hunts and the tangles of two leashes, which is almost as impressive as surviving the winter.

I love the splashes of color, and remembering that yes, spring really is on its way.

April?

So yesterday it was cold and snowy, and Mick had already turned off the gas to the pilot in the furnace. To keep the house (and Sarah) warm, we cook. Yesterday was pies...

Ma, we used some more canned squash (thanks for helping!), isn't it beautiful?


Sarah made some Little House lard pie crusts. Very nice. Mick tried to make a sort of shortbread crust


Two quarts of canned cubed squash makes four pies. On the two pies with a shortbread crust we sprinkled some of the shortbread...can I call it dough?...on the top. Great taste, great texture.


We tried a hot buttered rum type drink with the canning liquid again. This time almost no butter, and it was the best yet, and it has such a nice color.


Pretty decent pie.


So that was yesterday, and today is still cold, but at least we haven't seen snow yet. Nonetheless cold is cold, so today we made potato leek soup. We started by boiling some ham bones, then tossing in some diced potatoes. After those were cooked down we made some white sauce and added that to the soup to thicken, along with some parsley, thyme, salt, and garlic chives. Some larger diced potatoes went in then, and the chopped leeks. This is our first potato leek soup, and the first Sarah has ever had. It looks good!


Sarah tries out our new pepper mill


She put maybe a little too much in while I was trying to take the picture


And as usual, Roscoe gets the bones



Keep warm!

Thank you John and Judy!

Thanks so much for the card and gift, we loved the time you've shared with us and hopefully it'll be a good day for a motorcycle ride soon. We tried to use your gift in a way that would remind us of the two of you, and here is what we came up with:

along with

and a set of pub glasses. We went to Ithaca to go to the Lowe's there, and we couldn't help but stop at the Wegmans. They had all the beers, and the glasses I (Mick) had been looking for for some time now (years). They'll show up later in the post. So the first one we had was the Kriek. Neither of us had had it before, but we both have read about it and really wanted to sample some. Plus, the teasing taste you get from Three Philosophers might have goaded us on. It was super sweet, so definitely not made from the traditional sour cherry (it says black cherry right on the label), but nonetheless it was delicious. Perhaps the most striking aspect was it's physical beauty...the color, the effervescence, and the beautiful, tall pink head:

Oh, Sarah had never had Newcastle before, that's why that is in there. One of the finest mainstream brews, I think. Sarah says: Brown ales have always been very attractive to me, probably because they are malty more than hoppy (Mick adds, "And sweet.") This makes them very drinkable to me. So the Newcastle bottles have always tempted me, and we sprung for it! It is a delicious beer, smooth and complex flavors. I'm very glad that now I have a taste to put with the beautiful bottle! (Mick again) One thing I noticed in this batch that I've not before was an earthy flavor/smell that reminded me of the chickens we are keeping. Bizarre. Anyhow, the next beer we had was Brooklyn's Monster Ale. I've had it once before a long time ago, and Sarah has never had a Barleywine at all. Sweet, slightly fruity maltiness rushes in with the beer, but the hops quickly took over. It gives way to a more balanced arrangement, and the longer you held it in your mouth, the more the thick malty flavors shined through. But once you swallow, the hops come back to dominate, and linger. One of those things that's so complex I can't begin to pick the flavours apart. (Sarah says) The malt is strong at the beginning but the hops come in strong. Like I said before, hoppy bitterness is a taste that I am still acquiring, so as I drank it, I thought, eh this might end up being too hoppy. But right at the last minute, the malt comes back to save the day and balances the hops. Mick wants to keep the other three bottles for a time so we can see how the beer ages. He was so excited to see that Wegmans had it! so of course we had to try it. :)

The last beer in the bunch was Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout. Sarah has never had an oatmeal stout before (and has wanted to try it since she first heard the name), and it's been a long time since I've had one too, much less Sam Smith's. The smell of it was very bready with fruit, almost like banana-bread. It fit the profile of an oatmeal stout, with one addition...it tasted really smoky to me. Which fit somehow, and it was really good, but I didn't remember tasting anything like it in something that wasn't a rauchbier.

So thanks again, we love you, and hopefully we can enjoy some pints together sometime soon out of our new glasses.

Thanks!