Spring!It happens quickly, and it will be ninety degrees before too much longer, but spring in North Carolina is a beautiful, wonderful thing. All over the place the giant piles of pollen, birds singing their hearts out, and squirrels wrassling on tree branches are screaming, "It's spring! Let's reproduce!" And they are doing it. Doing it everywhere you look.
HWWLLB loves spring because he's a flower gardener (he took that pretty picture above). Our backyard is truly lovely this time of year, before the long, blasting hot summer comes and wilts and withers all the living things that right now are busy getting busy. All this nature sex makes me think of that great White Stripes song, Instinct Blues, about all the things in nature that get it (so why don't you?). Of course, you get it. Right?
This year the best thing about spring for me is vegetables. I finally joined a CSA, thanks to the smarts of Miss Billie, and this week we got our first bunch of goodies from Hilltop Farm. To celebrate, I made this giant salad with the romaine, red leaf and red bibb lettuce, radishes and spring onions we got from the farm this week.
For dessert I had a piece of the pecan pie I baked over the weekend with pecans from the tree in our friend's yard. Tomorrow, we feast on pac choi.
Have you heard of CSA? It stands for "Community Supported Agriculture." What it means is that you buy a seasonal share in a local (usually organic) farm, and then get a big box of fresh seasonal produce every week, all throughout the growing season. Here in North Carolina we have a nice long growing season, though the horrible heat of late July/early August sometimes means not much to eat for a little while, but lots of fresh foods most of the year. Here's a list of all the CSA farms you can join in North Carolina.
Next week we'll have strawberries! I can hardly wait to bake a strawberry-rhubarb pie.
Something must be in the air. My check went to Mystic Farms not two weeks ago. I'm still awaiting my first delivery, though....In the meantime, can I have some of your salad?
ReplyDeleteokay
ReplyDeletenow i am
dying
for a salad!
Very cool - have often thought about joining something like that but get lazy at the part where I have to find the program here...maybe I can just move to N.Carolina, since you've already done the finding part. And with my seasonal allergies, the "piles of pollen" sound just wonderful. ;-)
ReplyDeleteNice looking salad. Here in New Brunswick, your growing season is considerably shorter. The ground is officially thawed now, quite early this year actually. I remember some years that we had snow in April. Shudder.
ReplyDeleteI am suffering from salad envy now. Sigh.