As daft as my neighbors may think I am, I start to walk through my garden the minute I notice the snow retreating; well before I can even see the outlines of the beds still covered by feet of snow. Over an over again on the previous, refrozen, footsteps of yesterday. Thinking of every potential nestled in the Earth, with the occasional word of encouragement to those plants that need it, and projecting a mental picture of all the new things I will plant – sowing the fields with spirits unborn.
I don’t think I could ever live where there are no seasons or even mild seasons; or again in the city where none of that really matters, you just wear different clothes that’s all. The seasons can drive you crazy. The cycle of carrying the brown and lifeless husks of all your love and efforts to the fire and watching them sail up into the moon less night in contrast to joy you get from the pain of the rock digging into your knee as you smile nose inches away from the ground, inhaling the Earthy smell of everything that has come and gone, and rejoicing at the sight of something new cracking the soil surface still wearing a little seed-shell hat. That is not even a sentence but more like 20. Winter is necessary. Spring sucks, it takes forever.
The sun has some warmth again and you poke the newly uncovered soil like someone trying to wake a slumbering drunk, but to no avail. Mother still has to sleep it off.
A couple of inches of snow pulled back from the edge of one the raised beds to reveal a bit of thyme that I did not fully pull up last fall. Who would have thought it would over winter in the Adirondacks! I will have to plant some in the bed that snuggles up to the house, the one that the sage plants ( three years going now) seem to like so much.

Last Sunday I was woken up by the pager tones calling out Au Sable Forks Fire Department around 6am. Not the first thing you want to see when you roll over in bed (picture from bed). Someone set the old mill on fire again.

The window was open all night because it was in the 40s, which meant Ember spent the night in the window. But she got up again and looked on tooking notes regarding the speed and efficiency of the response.

This Saturday was spent experimenting, but not all bakes goes as planned. My peel, Emma, was having a bad day which resulted in a less than perfect drop onto the stone.

Even though I did not let the…thing…brown up, the experiment was still a success as the irregular bubbles were just about exactly what I was going for in addition to the cream color. No special flour here, just time, temperature and amount of “bread” yeast.

Some of the wild yeast breads. I was playing with my cuts. This one almost worked. You can see the other cuts in the adjacent loaves. They spread but not as much as this one did. It has to do with the angle, which also gives it that almost “tearing” look on the left side by the “ear” and a much wider spread than a near vertical cut.

Quite happy. Only two have “bread” yeast. Bet you will be hard pressed to pick them out.

Nothing but trouble….
























