29 May 2011

Spring garlic

I missed a few heads of garlic when I was harvesting them last fall, and as soon as spring came, those forgotten heads burst through the ground, green, leafy, and nearly as pretty as Siberian irises. And, they have the added benefit of being delicious.

Today I dug up one of the heads-gone-wild, and sliced all the whites and added them to a frying pan with a big glug of olive oil. After they simmered and softened I added a few eggs along with a generous portion of pepper. When the omlette-y egg covered the pan I added a heaped mound of arugula, a sprinkle of salt, and covered the pan with a lid. I flipped it once and let the arugula press into the smothering egg. A few corn tortillas with it and I had a most delicious Memorial Day weekend lunch, giving me energy and a happy belly to go back into the semi-soggy garden and plant a few more things.

22 May 2011

Right now

Last night while it rained I went outside and took pictures in my garden.  "Right now," I thought, "everything is alive."

Earlier in the evening my daughter and I watched worms dart  into the wet ground when we stomped or jumped; when I went out in the late evening damp they lay there plump and unconcerned, probably knowing all the birds were asleep.  After such a long, cold winter, and a cold, wet spring, it's easy to forget how irrepressible life is, how the push of seeds breaks soil long before we're ready to garden.  I missed a few heads of garlic last fall, and they were up and growing when the ground was half frozen.  I managed to get a few seeds into a the ground on a single sunny day in April, and I nearly forgot about them with the subsequent weather.  And now, when I'm still hoping for enough dry weather to get our garden planted, my peas are nearly a foot tall, and we ate a big bowl of arugula this evening.  If a living thing is given half a chance it grows, flourishes, thrives on air, sunshine, water, and warmth.  The wet air in the evening sometimes carries, in addition to its wet, the knock-me-over inhaled-intoxication of plum blossoms, apple blossoms, lilacs, and all things spring.  Life comes so soon, so quick, and it's here right now.