Poetry Friday: Between The Seasons

Happy Poetry Friday!

This photo isn't sunrise (like I wrote about in today's poem) it's sunset but it is April and it captures the warm, glowing feel I'm missing in our current season. Am totally jumping the gun mentally at the moment and living one month hence. Spring, you can not come fast enough...I am so ready.

That said, today's poem comes out of a deep, little corner of my self that knows that all things exist for a reason and all bits of creation have purpose and beauty and innate use, even early March. This afternoon Ru said to me, with this sweet, open face: "Mommy? What are leaches good for?" And then there was a long mommy-pause. Leaches are one of the very few animals that I deeply detest. But I want him to appreciate and value all of creation, not just the glamorous members like the nautilus and the zebra. So, yeah...even the lowly leach has a purpose and a value, and it's good at something...something I have yet to discover. I told Ru we'll head right to Wikepedia when I get the chance and read about them to see what they are good at because I just didn't know. And I will force myself to pay attention to the beauty of the now, even if now is frigid March. What exactly is March good at?

A Missed Interlude

The light had a way of crescendo-ing
April daybreak so that she realized
The dismissed tinkle of last month's
Icicles had been a kind of prelude.



In the meantime, to help the chill weather time pass faster, we have company for the weekend! I will be writerly absent tomorrow and Sunday but will rejoin you all on Monday, tuned up with fresh ideas, inspiration, conversation and laughter. Concentrated time with friends is good for my blog, no two ways about it.

And now, I'm off to make up the guest bed! Hop yourself on over to The Small Noun, a first-time Poetry Friday host, to find other participants, posting their poetic thoughts today.

Happy Un-Veguary!

Image via Wikipedia

Happy March...and happy end to Veguary! Heh. Tonight for dinner there was a juicy, crisp, roast chicken with all the drippings to dribble over our baked potatoes. I am not a vegetarian. I don't like legumes enough. I enjoy meat too much and I know too much about how to responsibly obtain good meat. Hard to sell me on the lifestyle. That said, it was an enlightening experiment and I think I'd do it again if I was faced with the choice all over again.

For those who wondered...we didn't really save anything on food bills this past month. Turns out buying meat isn't breaking the bank. We tried beans four million different ways, ate a lot of quinoa, had tofu and seitan and tried not to miss eating bacon with our pancakes on Saturday mornings. And we ate a lot of cheese for fun because we like cheese and cheese has protein and cheese, cheese is not meat.  (unless you're doing Veganuary....I totally just made that up)

I thought I'd pass on the two recipes I liked most from this month of meat-free living. These will join our canon because they were so good that they made A stop mid-chew and say, "Um. Wow. This is good." Ironically, they are both soups. Soup used to be my deep nemesis. We're friends now.

Soup #1 is a Tuscan White Bean that one of my painting mentors recommended to me. It's filling and wholesome and cheap and simple and feels so happy satisfying. I will turn to it for cold weather pleasure food in the future for sure. I kinda want a bowl now, just writing about it and remembering its fabulousness.

Soup#2 is a fabulous rendition of Vegetarian Chili. I made this dish with great skepticism. I'm really not big on dishes that are faux versions of something. I like chili. Real, regular chili with meat in it that you can serve to men who have just come in from splitting wood in the bitter cold. (Not that men around here split wood....) Even though I like real chili. I like this chili too. No tofu crumbles to resemble meat, no substitutionary  tricks of the eye...just a multi-bean mix with a good broth and a little chocolate for a spoon licking depth of flavor. And anything with chocolate in it is good. Why didn't I think I was going to like this?

So, yes, all you real vegetarians are made of sterner stuff than I am. I confess I am a wimp...but boy, that roast chicken sure made me happy.

Related articles

• Springtime Ayurvedic Shopping List (realyoganyc.wordpress.com)
• Protein Foods List (mademan.com)
• Top 5 Healthy Meat Substitutes for Vegetarian Diets (brighthub.com)
• The Art (And Science) of Being Meatless (friendseat.com)
• Eat less meat in Veguary (healthzone.ca)
• Try It: Eat Less Meat (shutupandtryit.wordpress.com)
• Martha Stewart Living: Roast Chicken Tips & Recipes (huffingtonpost.com)

The Saints Came "Marching" In....

 Quiet weekend moments

March is here....the first month of spring. Only 18 more days until we get there! This last bit of winter suddenly seems tolerable. Less than a month, just a handful of days, and so much to do to get ready for our upcoming trip to California, house shopping and Baby Bird...arriving in just the blink of an eye.

One last confectioner's sugar snow on Friday night.

I have a swamp willow outside my bedroom window and last week sometime I happened to glance up at the top branches of the tree silhouetted against the sky and noticed that the buds on the tree had swelled like so many strings of beads, little round strands of future pussy willows all down each slender branch. This morning there were small silver tips on all those buds. I saw them glinting in the sunshine when my eyes first popped open. All the snow has melted again and the birds are still around, singing their little hearts out every time the cold lets up and the sun shines again. Its only a matter of time now...and March is here so the time is short! 

Bradford pear buds...all full and fuzzy.

We had a great weekend: dinner with friends, sleeping in, a wonderful midwife appointment where we heard the heartbeat loud and clear and confirmed that Baby Bird is securely head down, and a good bit of tasty food to boot. Just the sort of thing that you want to launch you into Monday.

Yours truly...thinking spring thoughts in your direction

I have to admit that although I'm making the weekend sound like a dream, I also had a good fierce cry or two, felt totally deflated about my dream farmhouse selling and left the laundry undone for far too long. But this is real life, right?...and truly, if I can feel this good about life again on Monday morning, I can't be too far off course. There are other houses out there and even though I feel like the wind is gone from my sails, there's no loss in looking more...and the truly perfect place might just be out there waiting quietly.

 Ru, cleverly using his new kid-sized oven mitt to pull out hot toast

In the meantime, our CSA sign-up came through and we're all memberized for the upcoming growing season, and I've been up to get fresh milk and eggs today which, always makes me feel more hopeful. On to the rest of a very promising week!

 

Must be spring.....we've had our first fall in the mud.