As April leafs out of the North Country #phenology

Within the past few days the countryside has come alive. Leaf out and bud burst is now obvious almost everywhere. Tints of green, in multiple shades, are splattered across treetops, interspersed with the red-maroon-pinks of maples. More birds are singing from fewer bare, leafless branches.

marsh marigolds in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Marsh marigolds and skunk cabbages have emerged along local creeks and rivulets that are flowing full from April's showers. Threats of Springtime flooding seem to have diminished into disappearance. Spring's arrival felt tardy this year but has now burst, quite literally, onto the scene. Somewhere in and around marshes Canada geese and sandhill cranes are incubating eggs. More and more bald eagles are nesting in our area and web cams reveal eaglets that  have hatched.

leaf out's beginnings

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow we pick up the first of our Spring Greens Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] shares from a local CSA. The [updated] greens include:

• Pirat lettuce
• Pea shoots
• Butter green salanova lettuce
• Green onions
• Green oak Sweet crisp salanova lettuce
• Kale
• Arugula

One of the challenges of having become an ardent supporter of local foods is that the Better Half is, quite literally, making me eat my words. Most of my life I've been near  the front of the class of the "meat and potatoes" school. Learning to eat my greens is causing me to swallow hard and learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.

cutting greens

By Lucille Clifton

curling them around

i hold their bodies in obscene embrace

thinking of everything but kinship.

collards and kale

strain against each strange other

away from my kissmaking hand and

the iron bedpot.

the pot is black,

the cutting board is black,

my hand,

and just for a minute

the greens roll black under the knife,

and the kitchen twists dark on its spine

and I taste in my natural appetite

the bond of live things everywhere.

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