locality.

what's in my neighborhood?
secret treats!
that's right, neighbors.
springtime in the woodsly goodness is finally really actually happening,
and that means that wild local secret bits and bobs are ready for us.
i mean it.
on my loooong, hot, uphill trek with crabtree yesterday,
i stopped to smell the flowers...
...and then i picked a few of them, too.
huh?
no.
they were not for a clipped and vased-up arrangement,
that'd be folly, as arrangements are so rarely adhered to around here,
but,
they were for a beautiful bountiful big action meal,
and i arranged for some thematic color scheme magic.
check the teleport:

MAY FLOWERS!!!!
guys,
i used stuff from right here-
asparagus from the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress,
fiddleheads from around the corner,
flowers and tree bits from the route we walk for exercise!!
expert?
you betcha.
*
i dry fried a whole bunch of tofu steaks,
dusted them with GPOP,
and let 'em sizzle.
when they were good and browned,
i glazed them with a agave-tamari-white balsamic sauce!
one big squirt of that sweetness,
a baby drippy-drop of the white balsamic for some acid,
two tears'-worth of liquid smoke,
and a few shakes of soy sauce,
and i was really onto something.
all day, i had those spruce tips marinating in extra-virgin olive oil.
it made them even softer, and it drew out the resiny, sappy sexxxiness
of those pitch-perfect piney babies in all the right ways.
sitting on a bed of red cabbage,
with scallion sprankles,
and garnished mutha-effing wild new hampshire violets?
c'mon.
if that's not a pretty piece of work, what is?
seriously.
the floral note floats up on the first bite,
and the spruce makes that agave-soy stuff really jump.
it's not the horrorshow of lapsang souchong tea or anything,
more like a fresh outdoorsy clean taste that rocks your face into the future.
*
and that farro salad!!!
word up.
cold farro, tossed around with a little lemon zest,
and the juicy juice of half a squeezed one, too.
mmmmmm.
that stuff is delicious.
mixed right in there, i finely chopped a real english cucumber,
skin on, because i like vitamins and nutrients an' that,
and shredded some baby kale, as well.
greens are good, but with the violets up above stealing the show,
i knew i had to hook it up, and freak it off a little more.
obviously.
so,
rinsed, plucked, and precisely the right call-
lilacs, lilacs, lilacs are on the flavor attack!
three shades of that incredible aroma,
reigning supreme, and raining down on me,
in a purple downspout outpouring of turbo-eleven sensuality!
but,
how do they taste?
THEY TASTE EXXXACTLY LIKE MY FACE IS
A BEAUTEOUS GARDEN OF FAIRY MAGIC!!
hahahahaha.
that's actually not a joke, tho...
*
y'know what IS kind of funny?
making salty, buttery pastry love letter envelopes
when you're eating dinner all by yourself.
awwwwwwwwwww.
hey man, it's cool.
the thing of it is,
i deserve a little love as much as anyone-
and who knows how to show it better than me?
nobody.
that's riiiiiight.
so i gave myself a little fresh garden asparagus bouquet,
and a couple of wrapped up sheafs of those spears,
all sealed with hearts,
because i LOVE asparagus, and i love asparagus-ish stuff, too.
mmm.
really.
garlic sauteed fiddleheads from the big spirals around the way,
and seared scallion stalks,
complete the big picture.
and it's a pretty one, isn't it?
yeah. i know.
*
nature wins,
and i think i must've been drafting in her slipstream,
slipping in on her coattails,
picking pieces off of the neighborhood,
and putting them to work over here,
because dinner sure felt like victory,
and tasted like a grand championship.
...too bad the rest of the day couldn't have been as expert.
crabby was a terror the entire day,
walking too hard, and then not enough, and then not at all,
and dumping himself in every muddy watering hole he could find-
which included all the planting here at home.
gardening takes a whole lot of money,
and easily ten times as much elapsed daylight
as working inside does.
especially if your dog wants to dig in the mud, nonstop,
and carry the plants over to places he'd prefer to water
....with his own special nutrient blend.
yuck.
still,
after a lengthy running battle with the berserker beast,
i dropped in a few replacement parts along the raised beds
of this woodsly goodsly rock-edged stone-henged garden,
but it barely made a dent in the missing pieces and empty spaces.
winter was a real sunovab!tch this year,
and the plow guy was even more of one.
ugh.
it's hard to rep a singular day off without missing out on some stuff.
like sleep,
and enjoyment,
and leisure,
and elementary communication-
but,
that's the way it is.
every year,
there are harder and harder styles as the light stays on longer and longer outside.
there's more day, in some regards,
and so much less, in so many others.
the thing is-
it's all really happening,
and it's leading us somewhere,
with or without the decoder rings and invisible ink reagents required
to interpret the secret universal roadmaps we're navigating by.
where do we go from here?
to work, obviously.
that's all there ever is to do;
never quiet, never soft.....