syrup season

maple syrup season is mostly behind us here. we sometimes tap our big sugar maple in the back yard, but this winter was just a little bit too action-packed to make time for the long process of tapping and boiling. when we first started researching how to do it, and which trees to tap, we learned that box elders also make sap, and therefore syrup, though a little less sweet than maple sap. we later discovered that was because box elder is a variety of maple. and so when i was trying to identify these very maple looking seeds that i knew were not maple, i had to think for a minute before i could remember which tree it was that also made syrup and was sort of a maple but not called a maple. it took my 50 year old menopause brain a little bit of creaky exploring through its own obscure corners. but it came up with box elder eventually. i wish i had some homemade maple syrup to reward it with.

boxelder (maple) seeds in late winter

bine vs vine

if you’re a nature geek, you might know that a vine climbs via tendrils and a bine climbs by growing in a helix around the object it climbs. i’m trying to decide whether as a spouse i am a vine or a bine. there’s something a little grabby about a vine. i think i’d rather be a bine–intertwined, but not grasping. embracing but ultimately independent.

unidentified bine

eat your greens eat your beans

yesterday i read an article by mark bittman, a cookbook author and former new york times columnist. it was one of the saner discussions of what to eat and what not to eat that i’ve read in a long time. probably since the last time i read michael pollan. the summary is that eating well is not complicated though the food industry and processed food marketers have made it so. eat mostly plant based whole foods. eat widely. eat joyfully. avoid processed food as much as possible. don’t pay attention to diets or fads. be reasonably active. get on with your life. live long.

assorted spring salad greens

prickly embrace

get on over here. look me in the eyes for a while. lean into me. i know you’ve got sharp edges. they don’t scare me. lean in. this isn’t some flirty high school thing. this is for life.

agave

steve’s bunny

we lost our last chicken a little over a year ago. chickens are not high maintenance but they are not low maintenance either. so given that my husband had a lot of writing to do this year, and given that he would spend much of his day mildly stressed out about squawking chickens and  predators and neighbors’ dug-up flower pots, we decided not to replace our beloved flock of golden buffs in 2017. now this year, it turns out, he may be editing a book and trying to get it into publishable condition under the watchful eye of a minneapolis editor, so 2018 is probably not a good year to be chicken farmers either. but for the last week, he has been watching out his office window, where a lone cottontail rabbit has emerged from under our deck , once each morning, to sit still in the sun for awhile, and munch a painful breakfast of spruce branches. there is nothing else green or tender or sweet or satisfying anywhere in sight. and so my non-chicken-farming husband has been strewing handfuls of arugula, tossing chunks of carrot, and scattering handfuls of sunflower seeds and granola, so that his beloved bunny does not experience too much late winter deprivation. it might be easier just to buy some more chickens.

frosted oak leaves from my driveway this morning