While My Tea Steeps, I Getaway

There is chard and calendula in the garden, and eggs, too... depending on where the chickens are laying. Between the surplus eggs, and the return of cold weather, quiche popped into my thougts when I was at the market. I grabbed the pie crust at Trader Joe's, and some of their shredded cheddar, and leeks. I love leeks! I don't have a recipe, but the consistency is what I go by. 8 eggs, sauteed leeks, and chard, and the small tub of cream cheese leftover from a bagel weekend. Salt. Pepper. Dill. The rest of the shredded cheese mix from the fridge bin, and a splash of heavy cream. And calendula petals! I don't really taste those... they aren't peppery, like nasturtium. The calendual taste a bit like a redleaf lettuce, maybe slightly like cucumber? Anyway, I know they are beneficial, so in they go, for heart, body, and soul! Then I got fanciful and made quiche flowers, which I dabbed with some watered down yolk, hoping it would keep them from shriveling up. I like the results! And it reminds me that I want to make one of those focaccia that looks like a painting... pepper petals, and leek stems, tomato flowers, just all kinds of veg to create an edible painting atop the bread. Have you seen those? Just type "focaccia art" into your search engine... Google shows me an entire garden of focaccia art! Amazing. They are beautiful! Oh yes, oh yes, I want to play with my food!

The beloved daffodil, Valentine's Day up to this morning. Yesterday, it rained, and I can see the slight silver streaks of rain in picture 6, and sprinkles on the petals in the seventh image. Ever the greedy gardener... it seemed like so many when I was digging holes, and dropping in the bulbs, but of course now I can imagine twice as many, or four times more! There's room. And they'll spread. Right? I wonder if I should just leave them in the ground, and let them figure it all for themselves? Otherwise, I worry that the task of digging them up, storing them properly, then remembering to plant again, next fall, will be my undoing! I can't pretend anymore that I could get any better at even easy jobs. In the meantime, I am taking lots of pictures, and whenever I think of it, I dash over and see the progress. I should find seeds of flowers that can fill in, so we have a succession of blooms.

When I pull back the camera, you can see I have plenty of blank canvas. This is an area that was very recently created, when we moved our stash of construction leftovers, cut into the bank and shored it up with the blocks. It's not always this "charming," because often times we stash the rubbish bins along the wall, or have something parked there. You can't imagine all of the shuffling, loading, packing, and removing we have going on! It is, at best, organized chaos, and I regularly inhale slowly, mindfully, and repeat to myself that we will survive our ambitious plans, and the upheaval that coincides, and in no time (3 years) everything will be orderly, serene, and basically awesome. Amen.

When hammering, drilling, sawing, is incessant, when I can't find my way through the sequence of operations... the paperwork, material orders, plans, blueprints, appointments, design meetings, and shuffling, I take another mindful breath, and stare at my grape hyacinth, update this blog, or make quiche flowers from calendula petals. Sitting at the dining table this morning, waiting for my chamomile tea to steep, I gazed into the forest of muscari stems, and imagined being small. Small enough to trek between the bulbs, and hike my way up and down the papery trunks, to a comfortable niche between the towering growth, and looking up, I would sigh happily, tie a hammock, and relish the getaway.