Nettle Tea

Up until last week, I have always tried to stay away from this spiny dragon of a plant. It triggers unpleasant memories, like when I squatted down to pee in the woods at Hogsback and basically sat on one. 

But this week I sought it out, armed with bright pink rubber gloves and a big bowl. It's hard not to jump on the fresh nettle train when the shady part of the pasture just steps from my back door is full of them, just three or four inches tall--so many that my friend and I, after picking for an hour, processing, and then coming back for more, couldn't even tell where we'd harvested. We were inspired by a local homesteader, Corina, whose blog I love to read. She just recently wrote about nettle pesto, and we had to try her recipe. Eight batches of it. 

It is delicious enough to snatch a cube of it from the freezer and pop it into your mouth plain, as Tim can testify. 

I also tried dehydrating lots of it for nettle tea. Stacked full, the dehydrator only takes a few hours to turn the leaves shriveled and crackly. I use the very scientific recipe of about one teaspoon dried leaves per mugful of water.

The flavor reminds me of green tea, earthy and somewhat spicy and spinachy. Spinachy tea doesn't sound super delicious, I know, but I have found it quite addicting. Apparently it also has superpower health benefits. I feel much more friendly toward nettles now, at least until summer, when they'll be thigh-high and I'll want to walk around in sandals.

The Message of Peas

I'm a fairly impatient person. When an idea bursts into my mind, I hate to wait to carry it out. I may regret it later--why did I fiddle with that rum-and-coconut-cake recipe last night instead of catching up on that deadline?!--but sometimes I just can't help it. The idea is there, and it won't go away, and the only way to be rid of it is to do it.

So I find gardening an agonizing process. Vegetables grow so slow. Recently I've taken up my garden-season habit of walking the greenhouse and our planted beds every lunchtime, partly to water (the greenhouse, not our direct seeded plants, which are spring-showered on enough right now) and partly to stare. Have the onion seedlings grown any since yesterday? Where are all the Copras, and why are the Wallas growing so much better? Are there any more cabbage sprouts? Are the fall shallots taller? Have any direct-seeded peas sprouted?

Most days, the answer is no. To all those questions. And I bite my lip and squat down in the dirt and squint, wishing for laser vision to see what's happening beneath the soil. I want to stick my finger a few inches deep and see--and maybe in the case of one tulip bulb, I do. Just to make sure. Still growing?

Some days, the answer is yes. Like the other day, in the morning I saw four snap pea shoots in the greenhouse. In the afternoon, I saw one new slender green thing shrugging potting soil off its back, head still curled under. Now, today, it's standing straight and tall.

Today I think I saw the first snap peas poking out from along the fence line, where we direct seeded them. It's hard to tell. They could be weeds. But they looked different than anything else around, and they were all in a row, about two inches apart.

So I congratulated them and went back inside. There is nothing else I can do. Garden peas are not like the cheese mat that can arrive on my doorstep in two days via Amazon Prime. In May or June, we will be drowning in peas, maybe hundreds of pods of them, thousands if you count the shell peas, but for now they are all in my head. 

Meanwhile, I'll be out there again tomorrow, imagining them--and soaking up their lesson of patience. 

a season for walking slowly

Indian plum. I've never noticed it until this spring! Now I see it everywhere and I'm obsessed. Something about the glow of the leaves backlit by sun, and the up-reaching shape of the clusters, like raised hands greeting the change of seasons. I couldn't stop taking pictures of them the other day when we walked the trail. 

It's funny what living in the country does to perception of season. Every tiny snowberry leaf is a reason to stop and watch, and rejoice—the wildscape alive again after months of sleeping. The change is so startling and drastic and everywhere. 

I'm trying to put a finger on why spring is so much noisier to me here, and I don't mean actual noise but it is a roar. I guess the answer is obvious: without the confines of pavement and the crowding of buildings, spring is literally everywhere I look, pulsing through everything. Roaring, if I listen close.