Weights and lengths

 If you grow zucchini, you know that even if you check often there will still be one that you miss until it is overgrown. After our big one was picked today, Hazel said that I should take a picture and put it on my blog! 

When we weighed and measured it, we were kind of bowled over by a couple facts. The zucchini weighed 2.2 pounds and was 13 inches long. 

When Hazel was born, she weighed 2.2 pounds and was 14 inches long. It makes me cry as I write this. She is a miracle, and not for a second do I ever forget it. And here she is today with that zucchini.

Second garlic harvest 2022

 Today we harvested the other two varieties of garlic that Tom planted back in November.

This is Music, a hardneck with big cloves. We got 31 bulbs.

What High Mowing Seeds has to say about it: 

A large, beautiful variety that is easy to grow! Slightly spicy flavor is hot raw and sweet roasted. Originally from Italy.

The third variety is called Chesnok Red.  88 bulbs.

From High Mowing:

From the Republic of Georgia. ("That Georgia's always on mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi mind"). 

And here's what the porch looks like! I feel like a queen.

First garlic harvest - 2022

 Tom planted garlic on November 9th of last year, and we have just harvested the first of it called Inchelium Red. This is what the company we buy from, High Mowing Seeds, had to say about this variety:

This widely grown softneck was originally saved by a native population in Washington State and found by Larry Geno on the Colville Indian Reservation.

Softneck means it can be braided, and I am thinking of trying it. I am not naturally "crafty" at all, but I think I will still see if I can do it. I've already found sites that tell me how. 

Drying it just where we did many years ago. We got 29 bulbs.

We have two other varieties which aren't quite ready to pick yet - Music, and Chesnok Red. 

Blur - To the End (Live at Alexandra Palace 1994)

 

 I love this song. I've been listening to the Parklife album today, and Blur is one of those bands I so wish I had seen.

Whippoorwills

When we first moved to Windy Poplars Farm in 1981, we heard whippoorwills. This continued for a few years, and then we didn't hear them. I looked back in my emails, and found a few correspondences with the state Audubon Society. In 2002, I found an email I had sent, saying we hadn't heard them in maybe 15 years. The response was essentially that they didn't know. Some had thought change of habitat or decline in moths, but no one knew for sure. I also found an article from a state newspaper around the same time despairing the fact that they just weren't around.  A few years later, we drove north an hour or so, and participated in an Audubon study to see if we heard any whippoorwills. We drove around to several promising spots, but heard nothing. Flash ahead to 2013, and they were here. Again in 2018, they appeared. When I wrote to Audubon, they said there were several people who had also heard them! I have a note that I heard it in 2019. And then an Audubon publication from last year says they are doing well in certain areas of the state. I can certainly attest to that this year! Without fail, for weeks now the whippoorwill has appeared just outside the house. It has been on the roof, in the lilac, and on the terrace. It comes at dusk and dawn. It feels like such an honor. I do have a movie of it, but I haven't been able to put any of my videos on the blog for a long time. You may hear their sound here.

photograph from Cornell Labs.

There is a terrific new article in The Old Farmer's Almanac, here. They quoted Thoreau:

It could mean many things, according to the wealth of myth surrounding this night flyer. The note of the whippoorwill borne over the fields is the voice with which the woods and moonlight woo me.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)

Today's poem by James Russell Lowell

 

To The Dandelion 

by James Russell Lowell

(February 22, 1819-August 12, 1891)

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

Horse Race

I don't believe that there is any sport on earth that tops the Triple Crown horse races. I won't spoil it for you, but if you haven't seen the Kentucky Derby race this year, you can watch it on you tube. I don't think that I have ever seen a more exciting race in my life. I feel lucky to be alive!

The Kinks - "Waterloo Sunset"

The Kinks page I follow on Instagram says that today is the 55th anniversary of the achingly lovely "Waterloo Sunset". In the video, they are performing on a German TV show in June of 1967. The music critic Robert Christgau once said that it is "the most beautiful song in the English language"!

First flowers in the spring flower CSA

 This year we ordered another spring flower CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) from the woman who lives in our town. You may read about her from last year, here. She just recently had a baby girl, and is still doing as much as she can on the flower farm, with the help of her husband. She is skipping the farmers' market this year, and "just" doing the weddings which are lined up! Wonder woman, indeed.

Anyhow, the first spring CSA bouquet was available today. Almost all tulips, and three poppies. 

And a few minutes later, they opened!

Kitchen life

 I feel there is a kind of perfection in starting the vegetable and flower plants in the kitchen. After all, this is the room where most of them will end up - as flowers on the windowsill or vegetables being cooked and eaten.  

We put a drop cloth on the kitchen table when we are planting seeds, or transplanting when they have grown too large for their pots. The big lights are set up in front of a south-facing window with a heat register underneath, and the woodstove a few steps away. This heat has been just perfect for the growing plants. We also have smaller lights on two counters. The kitchen is pretty much "remodeled" for these weeks, but it makes me happy just walking in and seeing all the green. 

Here are some pictures. They aren't awfully good photographs with all that fluorescent light, but I took a few with the lights off as well. 

Both Sides Now, covered by Brandi and Evangeline Carlile

Just a little video to melt your heart!

Quote du jour/Paul Simon

 I've always loved the entire song "April Come She Will", and I thought I'd use the first part as a quote du jour.

April come she will

When streams are ripe and swelled with rain

This is sure the way it is around here. And in snow country it is the melting snow that swells those streams and rivers. 

I just played the Sounds of Silence album the other day. It is just excellent.You may listen to the song here:

https://youtu.be/PYD-DIggB2k

Today's poem by Ogden Nash

As I opened my Susan Branch calendar to April, this delightful poem appeared.

Praise the spells & bless

the charms,

I found April in my arms.

April golden,

April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel,

Tender, rowdy;

April soft in 

flowered languor,

April cold with

sudden anger,

Ever changing, ever true -

I love April, I love you.

"Always Marry an April Girl"

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

Quote du jour/E.B. White

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

E.B. White, "Hot Weather," One Man's Meat, 1944

And now there seems a chance that there just may be no more changing the time on the clocks! 

Tomorrow at 11:33 am, the sun enters Aries and we are officially in spring! 

This is what the last day of winter looked like today at Windy Poplars Farm

Quote du jour - Chris Packham

 

Whilst we face our own troubling times, let wildlife be the solace, the hope, the inspiration for us all.

Chris Packham

Winterwatch 2022

These words mean so much to me because they are an expression of what I feel. The virus goes on, and I still don't go out much. My window is indeed my window to the world, and through it I see such wonders. Pictures are from the past few months.

The first partridge which has ever come into the yard, and she (Tom calls her "Miss Partridge") isn't a bit shy. I put this on instagram and called it, "all creatures great and small". 

This year the mother deeries and two babies who were around all summer came to their driveway dining table, along with 8 of their buddies.

The wild turkeys on their way to the stream for a drink of water before they fly up to their roosts for the night. 

They are also not shy. They come up on the terrace, and up the kitchen steps. 

Tractor Supply is happy to see Tom walk through the door.

Today's song - "Giving You Away" / Lukas Nelson and Promise Of The Real

Music still gettin' me through the never-ending pandemic. This is a perfect father and daughter song at a wedding. Makes me cry. 

Calendar of Crime - January / The Nine Tailors

For my January book. I chose 4. - the New Year's category. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers begins with Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter going off the wintry road into a ditch.They walk until they come to Fenchurch St. Paul.

It was past four o'clock and New Year's Eve; the snow that had fallen all day gave back a glimmering greyness to a sky like lead.

I bought a lovely used copy years ago. I have been meaning to read it in January, prompted to do so by Gladys Taber whose housemate Jill read it every year in that month. From Stillmeadow Sampler:

Jill, of course, reads Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors again, although she almost knows it by heart now.

And from Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, concerning which one book to take to a tropical island:

Jill would take Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors and just reread it every few days.

I enjoyed the small parts of the book which focused on a dotty vicar and his long-suffering and much-loved wife. However, I simply cannot say that I liked the book. The main subject is campanology, which is bell-ringing. Sayers is clearly very knowledgeable on the subject, but this reader could not understand it at all! I felt like I was reading an unknown language. And the locale was so dismal and depressing that I couldn't stand being there, even if in the pages of a book! The villagers for the most part seemed as miserable as the locale.

I watched The Nine Tailors many years ago, and my memory of it is that I just didn't get what was going on. I felt sure that if I read the book, all would become clear. But, no. The book is well-thought of, and highly praised, but I  cannot add my voice to the throng.

Quote du jour / Vita Sackville-West

 "The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer.  Minute by minute they lengthen out.  It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change.  It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour."

Vita Sackville-West 

Here she is at Sissinghurst in 1960

This is so true! Every day it is lighter longer. Tom keeps a weather journal, and says we are gaining about two minutes of daylight per day. The night doesn't come boom! now. There is a real twilight time. And as of January 19 at 9:39 pm, one third of winter is past.

Dean Street Press - free Kindle books

 I have mentioned the wonderful Dean Street Press before, but I don't think I told you that they offer a "free Kindle e-book of the week". Isn't that the most marvelous thing!

You may go here to see what is offered each week. I am delighted to have just gotten the 2016 biography of Noel Coward!

Addendum: I read about 120 pages, and while it was pleasant enough, I must say I got a little bored and quit.

As Time Goes By

 I saw on instagram that the first episode of As Time Goes By premiered on January 12, 1992. 30 years!! I can hardly believe it. My children turned 10 and 7 that year. 

I decided I would start watching it all over again beginning tonight. I own the boxed set, and have watched many times. I have a note that the last time was 2017. 

Long time readers will remember Mrs Bale making many appearances, and I am thinking she might again this year. She has her own letter topic on the sidebar, with 80 entries!