Spring Comes to Our Yard

We are finally getting some bloom in our own backyard -- several weeks after the neighborhood streets began to get festive with the new season. Perhaps we don't have quite enough southern exposure to allow for Valentine's Day blossoms. But the plum trees are making up for lost time, decked out in their dainty finery.

Overall, February is a back-and-forth month, mostly chilly, foggy, and rainy with a few glorious breakthrough days. Katherine Grace Endicott's Northern California Gardening gets it mostly right for our little niche: "February is a month of heavy rain and freezing temperatures in much of Northern California. The weather does not beckon gardeners outdoors. There are, however, usually one or two days of false spring -- days so gloriously bright and unseasonably warm that thoughts turn quickly to the garden."

We've certainly had the rain, if not the freezing temperatures. And we've had the glorious day or two of brightness and warmth that didn't seem false at all, and beckoned me right outside to plant a bed or two and admire whatever is in bloom.





The periwinkles are showing a bit of blue.




So are the forget-me-nots.




The arugula is growing like the weed that it is and starting to show off its white blossoms. It's still good for salads, though.

Purple Mutant Broccoli

The garden is a never-ending source of surprises. The latest head-scratcher is this unexpected plant pictured above. The largest by far of the Romanesco broccoli, it has put forth a head that looks like some kind of cross between Romanesco and Purple Sprouting varieties. You can see the separate, fractal-like florets, but they are much less sharply defined than in a regular Romanesco, where the little components look as if they have been etched out by a laser beam. And instead of a pale. luminescent green, it has a heathery, purple color. Not unattractive, but slightly weird. It makes me a bit nervous.




Here is Purple Sprouting broccoli, which, like the Romanesco, I've never grown before. But it looks like what I expect from the label -- lots of small sprouts, just starting to appear, that will hopefully go on producing for some time. Both sets of seedlings came from Cottage Garden Nursery. Could there be cross-pollination?




Just for reference, this is what Romanesco is supposed to look like. The mutant head is three times bigger than these delicate specimens. We'll see what it tastes like. But then maybe we will end up with alien lifeforms sprouting from our foreheads. . . .

Buds Bursting, Birds Singing

Last weekend, C. and I took a walk through the nature area that runs through the center of a nearby subdivision. I was looking for signs of spring; he was running his own, mostly olfactory, survey. Here he is sniffing the breeze in the middle of a field of buttercups. If we could add little thought balloons to this picture, it would be: Me (off-camera) -- "Ooooh, buttercups. They weren't here last time we came by." C. -- "Four raccoons, six cats, and a dog who is smaller than me passed this way in the last 24 hours. Is this spot in need of marking? I think not."





The nature area is the site of a watershed restoration project. The creek is being brought back to its natural state. I was expecting lots of bloom, but perhaps these native plants have their own style, more subtle than the showy trees along neighborhood streets. Here's how the creek looks in mid-February.




The giant willow by the waterhole where the local kids like to play in warmer weather is starting to leaf out. A delicate greening is the main clue to the advancing season. I noticed lots of fat buds on several different types of trees.





After we got home, I took this photo out the back bedroom window of a robin gorging on ivy berries. There were several of them rustling around and whistling their happiness over a beautiful day in early spring.

Garden of Eatin'

Over the past week the harvests have been keeping us amply supplied with fresh produce, and still on track with our Eat the Yard Challenge. A basketful of chard and kale went into a big pot of minestrone, with plenty left over that's still in the fridge. Fortunately it keeps well.




Three little heads of Romanesco broccoli, lightly steamed, made Valentine's Day dinner festive.





And salad greens are reliable daily fare. Above, top to bottom: Red Lollo Antago lettuce, cilantro, Forellenschluss lettuce.




Above, top to bottom: Bronze Arrowhead lettuce, Miner's lettuce.




Above, left to right: Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, spinach (mixed Bloomsdale and Gigante d'Inverno), arugula.

For the record, here is the ongoing tally of eating something from the garden every day:

February 11: Minestrone with with winter greens (chard, kale)
February 12: Same
February 13: Same
February 14: Pasta primavera with garden parsley, Romanesco broccoli
February 15: Pasta primavera with garden parsley
February 16: Oatmeal walnut burgers with garden lettuce
February 17: Oatmeal walnut loaf, garden salad
February 18: Garden salad

Earth Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day!

Rather than visiting the mall to pick out cards or buy flowers flown in from distant lands, it's a lot more fun to walk around the neighborhood to see what's in bloom. On almost every block are exuberant displays of lacy pink or white creations.

These are the same streets we were walking just a month ago, in the dark, admiring the Christmas lights that most people still had up. Gradually, one by one, the houses went dark. Now they are decorated again with a whole different theme -- just like the stores, although Mother Nature's marketing promotions are far more enticing.

Above, I believe, is a flowering quince bush.



My rule of thumb used to be that the trees with pink blossoms are flowering cherry and the white ones are plum.



This one, right across the street from us, has white blossoms, and our neighbor assures me it is a flowering cherry. So, it must be admitted that I really have no idea what all these graceful trees might be. But who cares on a beautiful spring day?




About a 15 minute walk from our house is another white-blossomed tree, venerable with age and surrounded by Indian paintbrush, in the yard of an abandoned old farmhouse house on the edge of town.




In our own backyard, I know how to identify the plum trees because we've eaten the fruit for many a summer. So far, there are only two or three white blossoms showing, with lots more to come.

Emergency Parsley

Parsley sprigs in a glass on the counter are a fail safe device for adding something from the garden to a meal when time is short and there is nothing on hand in the refrigerator. Last night we ran out of salad makings and winter greens and I didn't have time to run out into the yard.




But not to worry. A bit of chopped parsley sprinkled over the pizza at the last minute keeps alive the game of eating from the yard every day. And, it turns out, B. had already sauteed in some fresh rosemary with the mushrooms.

2010 Eat the Yard Challenge -- so far, so good:

February 2: mushroom sandwiches with garden arugula, garden salad
February 3: garden salad
February 4: chili with garden parsley, sauteed winter greens
February 5: garden salad
February 6: tacos with garden lettuce, guacamole with garden cilantro
February 7: spagetti with garden tomato sauce (freezer), garden salad
February 8: sorrel soup, garden salad
February 9: mushroom pizza with rosemary, garden salad
February 10: mushroom pizza with rosemary and parsley

Sour Grass Soup?

OK, it happened like this: B. read an article about Sorrel Soup, by our local food and garden writer, Michele Anna Jordan, who is always eloquent and interesting. The description was so tantalizing he felt inspired to follow through, even though his left wrist is still in a cast and two fingers on the right hand are bandaged. Must be that irrepressible springtime energy that keeps manifesting itself in the midst of rain and fog and cold and chill.

There is wood sorrel growing wild by the back door and out near the garden, a definite sign of spring -- the first yellow blossoms opened this week in our yard. I've seen lots of them along the roads and in corners of neighbors' yards for several weeks now.

Wood sorrel is a common weed also known as oxalis. It is known to California children as sour grass (at least to the California children of my acquaintance). Just as we East coast children knew for certain -- as irrefutable childhood lore handed down from no one knows where -- that you could make sassafras tea from the root of the sassafras bush, West coast children know that you can chew on the stems of sour grass for a nice lemony, tangy treat. But soup from sour grass? That, we didn't know. However, as adults, we believe what we read in the newspaper or on the Internet.




Michele Anna Jordan used red-veined sorrel, a different plant entirely -- not in the oxalis family but a Rumex species related to Rhubard. However, a little bit of Web sleuthing revealed that wood sorrel is just fine for soup. Here's the money quote from an article on culinate.com:

"California children love to chew the stems of a yellow-flowered wood sorrel, which they call sour grass. According to Patience Gray, in her book Honey from a Weed, the French once considered oxalis the best sorrel for sorrel soup, or potage Germiny, which even today bears slivers of French sorrel in imitation of tiny wood sorrel stems, for the stems didn’t break down with pounding as the leaves did."

Even though B. didn't follow either of the published recipes, the end result was very like what Michele Anna Jordan described seeing in a scene set in a Paris restaurant in the TV miniseries of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited: "a pale green soup served in a wide pretty soup plate."

It was remarkably good -- no doubt helped along by mushroom broth, leeks, potatoes, and asparagus -- with just a touch of lemony tang. And, so it seems, humble backyard sour grass soup is actually the ancestor and inspiration for fancy French sorrel soup.