Today will be a day for gardening. It is sunny and warm and the whole universe commands ‘Grow!’ Sook told us yesterday that we are too late for potatoes but we found some and Axel will get them. Last summer we got hooked on home-grown potatoes. The store-bought variety only remotely tastes like it. We will also put in the asparagus bed sometime soon, with the help of the Lasmans, experienced (asparagus) growers. If we can get these two things right all we need is the pig and the chicken to complete one of our favorite meals: ham, hard-boiled eggs, potatoes and asparagus (with lots of butter). Tessa grows asparagus in her London backyard but left just at the wrong time and Steve is not paying attention. She will come back to a bed of feathery green plants. What a shame.
I called Holland to see how my niece Emily is faring at the university hospital in Leiden after yet another operation on her insides. It is better that I do not talk with her about asparagus meals because that will not be in the stars for her; a simple meal is still weeks (months?) away.
We celebrated Katie-Blair’s birthday in style with as many of us as could be seated on a table that filled the dining room. There was more asparagus and colorful salads and salmon and potatoes. With only one of us under 30, her son, we talked about what our thoughts were about careers when we were 30 and how far ahead we planned our future then. The group sorted itself along gender lines, mostly, with the women getting used to mothering and having to make adjustments to career plans, if there had been any in the first place and the men making decisions that rippled long into the future, that is the present of now.
If there was such a thing as Quaker Bells, they would be ringing now and it is time to get on the bike and ride to Beverly Farms for the hour of silence that I have missed now for over a month.
Sylvia's Journal 
0 Responses to “Great day for potatoes”