I have to give credit to my daughter Rose who took this lovely picture of me and Matilda at milking time. This is how our mornings always begin. It’s been a busy week, and it all started when one of my milk cows named Chestnut (because of her beautiful brown coat and prickly personality) came…
Tag: herbs
Savory Sweet Potato Stuffing
All the days lately have been either full of silver mist with sunshine at the edges, or golden and blue with somber grey in reserve. Some very sad news reached us a few days ago – a very dear family friend passed away suddenly and unexpectedly over the weekend. He was only a few years…
Sumac Lemonade
Early yesterday morning I heard the cold winds of a front rustling the branches of the naked cherry trees and making acorns rattle down on the roof from the oaks that grow all around and over us. I lay awake for a while, listening to the strange thumps and rumbling of paws outside. From far…
A Change Of Season
Winds of change have been blowing white cottony clouds low across the blue sky all week. Hurricanes are brewing in the ocean far away. The old hens are looking molty and tattered, and one by one the huge orb weaver spiders that wove golden webs around the kitchen eaves are disappearing. In the dry afternoons…
Black Cherry Clafoutis: A Native Florida Custard Cake
I am always unprepared for the intensity of this season, ruled by the sun and violent storms. The heat feels suffocating and damp, and when the wind blows, it is a hot wind. Every day the shining white clouds build up into flickering, violet storms piled high in the hazy sky, and where they break…
Spiderwort Soda, A Magical Elixir
I have always been enchanted with the herb Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohioensis I think is the Latin). The thin, succulent leaves, like grass leaves, poke out at a pixie-like angle, and the luminous blue three-petaled flowers, each petal delicate like a fairy’s wing, whose color delights the eye and changes even as you stare, shifting between blue…
Wild Chickweed Salad with Ranch-Style Dressing
All around the earth is greening. The forest looks lacy with new leaves, and the pastures have begun to grow. Not only have the summer grasses thrown off their winter sleep and have started to poke up their heads and send out new shoots, all the pretty weeds of spring decorate the ground between the…
Radish Salad With Roselle Dressing
Radishes are one of my favorite things to grow, although they weren’t always. They are very easy and reliable, some years the only vegetable we could manage to grow in the early years of gardening, before we had cows and goats to enrich the land. I’ve pickled them, served them with butter, chopped the roots up for salad, …
Roselle Soda
The garden is behind. With Ethan out of town it has been hard to get things going when i had wanted to, but I’m not too worried. Those fall greens grow so quickly, and the roselle is in its fall glory, laden with deep red pods waiting to be picked. This, I know from experience,…
Eating Weeds
Anyone who has known me from childhood will remember that gathering and eating weeds has always been something I’ve done. I would run all over our apartment complex, finding edible plants to make picnics and feasts for my friends and family – and I still do! This time of year some of my favorite edible…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 