Scenes of the Season

 

These are Nanking cherry bush blossoms that are located along our garage and near our gardens.  Always loaded with beautiful flowers this time of year, the bushes buzz from the hundreds of honeybees and other insects that stop by for lunch.  The berries are quite small (smaller than a grape) and quite sour.  Still, the kids try to eat some off the bush every year.  Lisa made a batch of Nanking cherry wine a few years ago.  I'm hoping to use them for jam this year.

Lisa's tulips survived yet another Wisconsin winter.  Some seem to have slowly disappeared, but this group does well every year.

These little yellow flowers are all over our southern-facing slopes in the spring.  I'm not sure what they are.  They look a little bit like Cowslip but the leaves are different, the petals are thinner, and they are not located in a marsh.  Whatever they are, I look forward to seeing them each spring.

Wood violets are everywhere this time of year.  They not only carpet the woods and hillsides in purple each spring but they are also quite edible.  Most people use them in salads or to garnish everything from roasts to birthday cakes.  I thought I'd try using them to top off the fiddlehead/stinging nettle soup that I plan to make next week.

You know, I occasionally write stuff that flows out from me quite naturally and sometime afterward I look at it and go, "Oh mama, what's happening to me?!"  It's like having a sudden identity crisis.  It's like waking up in some foreign land and wondering how you got there.  It's like that sudden jolt of terror that strikes you when you finally let go of all denial and surrender to the fact that you are about to throw up.  I just had that experience once again as I re-read the previous couple of paragraphs.

This is the view from the southern-facing slope where I took the wildflower photos.  I tried planting about a dozen grape vines on this slope seven years ago, but only two have survived.  Too bad, I always thought this slope would make a beautiful vineyard.

Nathan is filling in one of the raised bed frames that I built recently (and Addison and Grace painted... exterior only).  This one is for russet potatoes, which Lisa planted as soon as Nathan was finished.

And these are fiddleheads.  The four of these, located closest to our foundation wall, popped up before all of the others due to the warmth provided by the wall.  It's easy to tell from this photo how they got their name.  I resisted harvesting them, preferring to wait until there's enough for a meal.