Swan Lake @ Wetten dass ? 2008-01-26

What can I say - georgeous, graceful, breathtaking and so seemingly effortless. When clearly it isn't. I can hardly stand on one foot to put my socks on

For lo, the winter is past and the time of the singing birds is here.

There are birds everywhere now and all of them are occupied in one way or another with procreating. We  have a little phoebe nesting by our front door for the third year in a row.  This inconveniences us a lot because we have to use the back door while she's nesting.

My neighbor told me a funny story yesterday. She looked outside to see her Walter, her chow dog, who looks  like a giant teddy bear, asleep in the yard.  There was a small bird perched on him, frantically pecking his fur and with a huge mop of fur hanging from its beak.  After watching for a couple of minutes, my neighbor went outside to shoo the bird away. She was concerned that the bird would damage Walter's fur and he is in a show this weekend.  The bird wouldn't leave until she actively approached it and shooed it.

Somewhere nearby there's a really soft nest.  It reminded me to put out all the bits of yard and fluff I've been saving all year for the birds.

The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth

Last night we had the season's first meal from our garden. Main dish: Sorrel Soup, with a salad partly composed of lettuce and arugula from our garden, and for dessert Rhubarb Sponge Pudding.

The sorrel we grow in our garden is wood sorrel, which has a pretty trefoil leaf and is considered the premium for flavor.  There is another kind of sorrel, from an entirely different family, called field sorrel. It grows wild around here and is supposed to be very nice, too. It has a sort of soury taste - a bit lemony.

Later in the season we will have radish leaf soup, which is made the same way.  We could have nettle soup - same recipe - but we have never tried it.  You can add any green at all, including lettuce to the soup.  I'll post the recipe separately.

The salad was also from our garden, except for the part which was from  our grocery store.  In the spirit of honest disclosure, only a small part of the salad was from our garden, but by next week we should be able to have regular salads of our own mesclun. 

And the dessert - rhubarb season is upon us and I'm so pleased.  I love rhubarb. The recipe, which I'll post separately, is English and is also dead easy. It's our favorite way of preparing rhubarb. Though my rhubarb crisp with ginger, is also very nice and almost as easy.