Now that my main seedlings are planted and coming up, I’ve turned to spring cleaning for Pesach.  Die chametz die!  I especially like the part where I have to drink up the chametz booze.  Doing my part for Liberty!  Here’s an illustration of my cleaned-up bar.

Here is E’s office:

Here is our “altar”:

More to come, stay tuned.

Just call me Farmer L42.  I was out there planting stuff from early-ish morning.  I planted most of my assorted Italian tomato plants, assorted sweet and hot peppers, eggplants, summer squashes, and melons.  Also some more herbs and flowers.  Lots of garter snakes kept me company.  I had to stop because I ran out of room!

While I was out there, I finally met some of the neighbors!  We had a nice time being neighborly.  Never fear, I’m not being assimilated into the mindless midwestern borg, because we’ll be moving before that happens.

It’s a beautiful 77 degrees out, and I did a lot of planting: two kinds of heirloom corn, a sunflower mix, pole beans, native red milkweed to attract monarchs, passionflower, which is an Ohio native, morning glories and moonflowers, and an assortment of annual herbs.  Then I mowed the lawn, watching out for all the garter snakes that were out sunning themselves in the tall grass.  Now I’m exhausted, but in a good way.  Time to whip out the new grill and play with fire!  FIUH!

While E is recuperating from a surgical procedure (hopefully the last of a series for a while), and somewhat zombified from pain and not very effective painkillers, I am busily cooking.  I made turkey BBQ, carrot-apple-sultana salad with cumin, cilantro, and fresh chives, and Mexican-spiced brown rice with corn, peppers, onions, and fresh parsley.  Outside my plants are seriously thinking about coming up, now that spring has sprung.  Inside, tomato plants are trying to jump off the sills to their deaths, if I don’t get them in the garden soon!   No complaints here.

Today I planted beds of native wildflowers along the side fence in the backyard, where it’s sunny all day.  I have echinacea, rudbeckia, annual wildflowers, perennial wildflowers, hummer/butterfly mix, bee mix, and midwest native wildflowers.  Along the shady side of the house, I planted native wildflowers for shade.  I figure while we’re stuck here, might as well surround ourselves with some nature-friendly beauty, not a big priority in this town, judging by the bleak, bare yards full of junk.  I  want to be the lady with all the flowers and critters wherever I live.

It doesn’t look like much yet, but soon this bed will be one big salad!

Our whole first raised bed is now fully planted with seedlings and seeds of:  lettuce blend, mesclun lettuce blend, spring mix lettuce blend, arugula, spinach, and bok choy.  Plus all the misc. stuff that wintered over, or I started from produce: onions, chives, carrots, celery, greens, and perennial herbs.  And the other bed has a radish mix so far.  Yippee!  One big salad!

Nope, not a post about a kind of Asian snack!  I refer of course to this auspicious spring day, which began for us in the chilly dark pre-dawn hours, driving the hour or so to the outskirts of Columbus, for E’s all-day medical procedure.   Once I drive her home to her recovery easy chair, to which she will be confined for a week or so, my gardening season will officially begin.  I will be like a caged animal unleashed!  Rowr.  (I should mention, my assorted radishes and snow peas, and some other cold-weather veggies, are already coming up out there, despite the icy weather.)  I’ll be a regular farmer’s market soon.

For now, here I sit in this cozy private waiting room, coffee and computer at hand.  I’m the lucky one.  Although somewhat minor and routine compared to her more extreme major surgeries, it’s still an ordeal, not to mention another financial setback. This has been a long, arduous, expensive process for E, one she would not have chosen or wished upon anyone.  It’s not a choice.  It’s never easy, even for those who are fortunate enough to start young with supportive parents, which is rare.  She was not so lucky.  I’ve been privy to a very eye-opening experience.  That’s all I’ll say about that for the time being.

So for now, I’ll be chief chauffeur, shopper, cook, nurse, and gardener.  I should be at Downton Abbey!  By now I’m pretty experienced at this profession.  I suppose it must be my calling or something.  Somebody’s got to do it.  It keeps me off the streets.  And other pithy sayings.

As E will be a bit incapacitated after a medical procedure tomorrow, she took preemptive action in the kitchen and baked two beautiful challahs in anticipation of Friday.  The challenge is to not eat them ahead of time!  If samples accidentally fall into our mouths, may lightning not strike us!  Oops, too late!  😉  At least we perished happy.  (Honestly, I’ve never had, or made, challah like this. Trust me.  They are The Real Deal.)  I wish photos could convey aroma, texture, and taste.

We here at the Almanac can safely predict that tonight will be The Final Freeze Danger of the season!  Tomorrow is a new day of Official Spring Planting.

Or, technically some time this week, after we take care of another medical procedure, wherein E will be laid up recovering and I will be happily gardening.  I’m chomping at the bit.  My seedlings are chomping, too–they’re threatening to jump off the sills and devour us.

These Ohio winters are a big bummer!  They don’t actually get respectable blizzards, just long dreary cold with teasers of false warm spells.  But at least frost-free comes a month earlier than where I’m from, so that’s something.  It can’t come too soon.  The rainbow was a Sign.  Every cloud…

(This being a folksy Almanac, I’m allowed to use clichés as much as I want, so bite me.  See what I did there?)

Here is a cheery rainbow.