Last Wednesday in this almost nonexistent winter that seemed, a couple weeks ago, to decide on spring and turned warm and sunny enough to encourage Silver Maple to bloom, buds on shrubs to swell, the tulips to pop up, and the rhubarb to begin to poke their prehistoric looking crimpy leaves to the surface of the soil, we celebrated the Spring Equinox. And then the next day it snowed several inches.

And now, from today through Tuesday, we are under a winter storm warning. The snow began around noon and has thus far been light. The forecasters are promising that by late this afternoon it will be falling hard, and by morning it is possible we might have as much as a foot of snow. Or not. Because it is a warm, wet storm, and the snow is heavy and wet and the temperature, currently hovering just below freezing, will rise several degrees above freezing tonight and the falling snow will become rain. But since no one can predict when the snow will turn to rain, no one cal predict how much snow there might be in the morning.

James and I have checked our bus cards to make sure we can use them in the morning if we need to. Riding a bike to work in a cold, pouring rain is not fun, but it is manageable. Riding a bike to work in a foot of snow, even half a foot of snow, that is turning to wicked tire-grabbing slush on roads with drivers speeding and passing too close, that’s a risk we prefer to avoid. It’s bad enough when the roads are dry, but add bad weather and my wellbeing is hanging by an easily severed thread.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate cars and the way cities, even an allegedly bike friendly city like mine, have been designed for people to not just travel by car, but to go fast in their metal death machines? In the United States, cars are the second leading cause of death among children ages 1-17 (the leading cause of death is guns) WTF is wrong with this country?

You might not guess it, but I began practicing daily mindful meditation a couple months ago and find it to be enormously helpful in keeping present and balanced. I will write about it in depth sometime but not today.

While Winter strikes back and the snow falls, I am snug indoors with the Friends School Plant Sale catalog that came out on the Spring Equinox. If you have followed my gardening exploits for any length of time, you will know that every year in May the Friends School in St Paul (Friends as in Quakers), holds a plant sale fundraising event. James and I have been attending this event every May for at least twenty years. The sale has become such a gardening event that ten or so years ago it was moved from the small school grounds to the nearby State Fairgrounds Grandstand building. As soon as the Save the Date postcard arrived in the mail in February, I have been anticipating the release of the catalog. I even put a reminder on my calendar so I wouldn’t forget to download it on release day.

And now, this weekend, I have wallowed in it. I went through it with wild abandon marking plant after plant as though I have ten acres rather than a tiny urban yard. I mark everything that sounds remotely interesting. The only plants that are immune from my garden dreaming are ones that require moist or acidic soil. My soil is sandy and alkaline so any plant that says “requires well-drained soil” or “drought tolerant” receives extra consideration.

Next weekend the whittling will begin. Besides a peach tree, I am most interested in perennial plants, preferably native, that flower in May and June and are good in part to full shade. I noticed last year after the first flush of early spring flowers there is nothing blooming in my front garden until July. Must do something about that. I also have my eye on medicinal and culinary plants as well as some dye plants. I might also try mushrooms but don’t know whether to get an indoor kit or an outdoor log. Will squirrels bother mushrooms? That would be the clincher. And speaking of indoors, after years of refusing to have plants I need to bring inside the house for winter, I am seriously considering whether I should get a rosemary and a bay laurel. How that decision ends up might turn out to be a slippery slope since I’ve already been thinking, well if I’m going to overwinter plants indoors, I could get a fig and a small citrus too!

This is bad. Very. Very. Bad.

While I am am out of my right mind with brain fever from the garden sale catalog, the indoor seed starting continues swimmingly. I trimmed the onions for the third time because they are doing so well. All the peppers I’ve started are up and Eduardo’s jalapeños are already getting their true leaves. And today I noticed a few tomatoes are just poking up.

Today’s seed starting batch is all perennials: goji berries, sea kale, feverfew, dyer’s chamomile, dyer’s coreopsis, and Persian catmint. All the seeds except the sea kale are teeny tiny! They are so tiny it’s hard to imagine the goji berry growing into a 2 meter tall shrub. It’s fascinating how perennial seeds tend to be so small while annual seeds tend to be large. Well, we actually eat a bunch of annual seeds, beans and peas for instance. Seeds are such amazing beings!

Now, if only spring would really arrive so I could get out in the garden and prep the beds for planting cool season veggies.

Reading

• Book: Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff This was so good! “The girl,” whose name we find out later is Lamentations, escapes from Jamestown during a siege by the local native people that followed the failure of Jamestown crops and the starving men raiding native fields and villages, killing people and destroying a village. The girl had seen a map and is heading north in hopes of finding French fur traders to take her in. It’s intense and beautiful and sad and all the things.
• Article: Tom Dispatch: If America Were a Trumpian Autocracy by Andrea Mazzarino. “We should already be talking about what it would be like, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, to live under a developing autocracy. Beyond the publicized plans of those around him to gut the federal civil service system and consolidate power in the hands of You Know Who, under Trump 2.0, so much else would change for the worse.” That Trump has a very real chance of winning the election in November makes me terrified and we need to take what he says seriously instead of laughing it off as so much silly nonsense.
• Article: The Conversation: US democracy’s unaddressed flaws undermine Biden’s stand as democracy’s defender by Dayna Cunningham and Peter Levine. While Biden insists that “Democracy is on the ballot” and he’s the one to uphold it, he neglects to acknowledge the ways in which democracy in this country has always been unevenly and unequally applied even by his own current administration. Yeah, it’s complicated. But it’s also a reminder that no matter who is president, we should not be complacent.
• Guardian: Opinion: The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities–including in Gaza by Naomi Klein. I have not seen the movie yet, I need to be in the right frame of mind for it, and I didn’t watch the Oscars and see Glazer’s acceptance speech, but I’ve read it and heard about the backlash. Klein’ piece puts it into context and characterizes the speech as brave, an assessment with which I fully agree.

Listening

• Podcast: Planet Critical: The Psychological Transition with Jonathan Mille. We talk and talk about the energy transition and all the other physical transitions climate change requires of us, but we spend zero time talking about the psychological transition that must be made to our stories of infinite growth, what it means to be successful, what a good life looks like and the the mental stuff that has to change too.

Watching

Nothing new here, move along

Quote

It is a moral failure to miss the profound beauty of the world, said the voice in her mind.

Yes, she said aloud, for now she did see the sin in full.

Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff, page 215

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

Nothing out of the ordinary or particularly special this week. Have I ever mentioned though that every Sunday James makes sourdough waffles for breakfast? Since the birth of Tilda, our soon to be four-years-old pandemic sourdough starter, James began making sourdough waffles for breakfast every Sunday. It’s become such a thing that if we don’t get to have Sunday morning waffles it messes up not only our day, but our entire week. His waffles are various and include plain whole wheat, multigrain, gingerbread, cinnamon raisin, and chocolate chip. Sunday morning waffles with fresh French press brewed coffee and a selection of homemade jams and nut butters is the sort of everyday kitchen wizardy everyone should have in their life.