A Few Loose Ends

It being springtime I thought I might tidy up a bit, tie up some projects and things to which I have referred but not followed up on. Above and on the right we have the Lemon tree that won "The Most Butchered" award a couple of months ago. It's not dead! As you can see, fitting for Easter and Spring and all that, what once was clearly "non-viable" is now sprouting out of every conceivable spot. Whew! Sigh of relief from Dan.

We cut and ashed some more potatoes this Monday, and by Thursday our last bed was ready to plant. So now we're all ready to sit back and watch them go. Oh, yeah, and weed them a ton. One of the beds had a compost pile on it previously, which makes for amazing growth, but also happy weeds. Here's a picture of new apprentice Ed ashing a potato slice.
One of the books into which Margo has passionately delved is Healing with Whole Foods, a 700+ page beast of nutrition theory and food-based medicine. She recommends it heartily. It is in Ecology Action's library, but we soon bought our own copy. Back to the point, one of the many ideas it presents is eating for seasons. Spring is for pungent herbs, sprouted things, and a bunch of other foods I won't turn down. So we are now tossing sprouted barley on top of our customary morning oatmeal. Sounds odd, I know, but it is quite tasty and spring-like.
Also on the food front, I want to share a couple of Margo's forays. I note in many of the blogs I read that recipes and food experiences are prime content. (I think that shows I'm paying attention to the right blogs). I'm not so great with recipes myself, but I'll gladly share what I know of Margo's.
First is a granola bar recipe from a farming friend east of here. She told Margo about it, and seemed to indicate that the oats used should be whole, not rolled. The bars were delicious and intriguingly, almost disturbingly chewy from the whole oats. Upon speaking to her later, our friend said something along the lines of "You used whole oats, huh? Wow, I never thought of trying that..." So we experimented without even knowing it.
The second one I've been waiting to share is the squash pie. Margo does experiment fearlessly in foods, consistently veering far from the known territory clearly mapped for us all in Joy of Cooking. Standing on that solid terrain she plots and theorizes, then suddenly striking out in surety she claims new ground. Usually it turns out to be a land proverbially flowing with milk and honey (I bet you vegans just love that phrase), though occasionally it is a mosquito-infested swampland that is left further unexplored. In the case of the squash pie I think it was generally a good experience. What stood out most in this pie was its lack of dairy and eggs. In fact, I do believe that this pie came entirely from the garden, with the exception of spices. Margo read somewhere that flax seeds work great as an egg substitute and tried them out in this pie. As you can see it was both solid and tasty.
Look forward to more of this kind of thing, but address Margo for the specifics.
Lastly, we are one cat less in the garden now. Marcello is no longer with us. I am not writing euphemistically here; Ellen took him off to a shelter on Wednesday where someone who wants a strange cat can choose him. His tendency to attack people when they weren't looking was lots of fun for us who know him, but for visitors and especially children that behavior is less entertaining. So, in honor of him, Marcello gets the final say in this post.