Planning My Soup Garden
This morning, after we thawed out from our cold blustery walk, I simmered up a pot of vegetable broth on the stovetop, curled up with my Territorial Seed catalogue, and allowed myself to dream about my soup garden. Soup is my favorite food and ever since I read about Margaret Roach’s soup garden, I’ve wanted to give it a try.
My Pirate gave me his list of suggestions that are inspired by his current obsession with cooking Thai food. Lemongrass. Check. Thai basil. Check. Then he relaxed on the couch with Barnaby while I marked up my seed catalogue.
I’m imagining The Victory Garden filled with beautiful leeks, onions, greens, kale, carrots, and beans. The kind of garden that Anna Thomas, my favorite vegetarian cookbook writer would love. I’ve cooked out of all of her books, but Love Soup is my favorite. Her recipe for simple vegetable broth is easy and delicious. And it isn’t just for making soup; I also freeze the vegetable broth in an ice cube tray and toss the broth cubes into a dish for an added dimension of flavor.
I paused occasionally, with seed catalogue clutched in hand to sample the simmering vegetable broth as it progressed. I felt warm and happy. Bring on Spring!
What soup vegetables do you recommend?
Super-Simple Vegetable Broth
Recipe by Anna Thomas
4 quarts of water
8 carrots
2 large onions
6 celery stalks
2 leeks
4 small potatoes, unpeeled
1 cup parsley, coarsely chopped
4 teaspoons of fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
Wash the vegetables and chop into two-inch chunks. Add all the ingredients into the pot of water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer for one hour. Strain. Enjoy.
It's hard to believe that Barnaby was this small last June!
Poetry Post Poem: How to Uproot a Tree
How to Uproot a Tree
By Jennifer K. Sweeney
Stupidity helps.
Naiveté that your hands will undo
what does perfectly without you.
My husband and I made the decision
not to stop until the task was done,
the small anemic tree made room
for something prettier.
We’d pulled before, pale hand over wide hand,
a marriage of pulling toward us what we wanted,
pushing away what we did not.
We had a shovel which was mostly for show.
It was mostly our fingers tunneling the dirt
toward a tangle of false beginnings.
The roots were branched and bearded,
some had spurs
and one of them was wholly reptilian.
They had been where we had not
and held a knit gravity
that was not in their will to let go.
We bent the trunk to the ground and sat on it,
twisted from all angles.
How like ropes it was,
the sickly thing asserting its will
only now at the end,
blind but beyond
the idea of leaving the earth.
In the Morning Light
In the morning, right after I feed my dogs, I go outside with my camera and under the watchful eye of the Crony Brothers and Barnaby, I take pictures of my garden in the morning light. So much for solitude at dawn.
This winter has been foggy and mysterious.
The sunrises through a light fog shroud me in gauzy pink light that remind me of Monet's impressionistic paintings.
And I forget myself as I click away with my camera hoping to merely capture a glimpse of the beauty surrounding me. As the pastel colors fade, I hear The Crony Brothers' garage door close. Show over. And I smile to myself.
Barnaby versus the Fridge
As of tonight, the top of the fridge is no longer a safe place to hide things from Sweet Barnaby. My (oh so ornery) Pirate carefully placed a new dog bone to hang over the precipice of the top of the fridge. I interrupted his plan when I walked back into the house and found My Pirate poised with iPhone in hand to document the moment. I reached for my camera and Sweet Barnaby reached for the bait all the while muttering and howling in frustration.
It’s time to go permanently clean off the top of my fridge. Where should I hide the dog treats?