I’m thinking March might be the month when most blogs die. Of course, many blogs are begun as New Year’s Resolutions, on January 1, and those probably die by February 15, along with many diet and exercise plans.
But March is cruel– much crueler than April, methinks. Sure, it stays light until 7 p.m. now, and that is hopeful. So I sow some seeds in bright pink containers. During a snowstorm on Tuesday, March 18, when I was completely anxious about our trip to the airport for our vacation in New York the next day, I used up all my remaining compost and seed starter planting romanesco, kale, lettuces, parsley and cilantro. We got home to the poor, wispy things bending toward the sun. I’ve been rotating them but they look weak.
I’m more anxious, as I always am, about the peppers I started way back on March 9. Doesn’t that seem like forever ago? They need warmth, not just light, to germinate, so I have a heating pad under them, but I think the thing cycles on and off and I’m not sure it is working the way I want it to work. No sign of pepper plants yet.
March 25 I went out and soaked the soil in the cold frame with three 5-gallon pails of water. Then I sprinkled winter lettuce, kale, arugula and mizuna seeds over the bed. On March 26, we got another 3 inches of snow, but today I wiped it off and watered the bed again. The temp is right around 32, so I think it is probably OK inside the cold frame. Tromped through the snow to get back with my watering can.
As to the hiatus in blogging, I apologize. It’s not like I’ve just been sitting around.
We went to New York, and it was fabulous. I highly recommend Caryl Churchill’s play Love and Information. There were six of us and we all gave it raves. Extraordinarily good acting, script, staging, the whole nine yards. And funny, too. It made me want to write!
We ate great food, but the real find for me was Gaia Cafe on the Lower East Side. I wanted to beg the Italian owner to take me home with her. I’m sure her apartment is full of tulips and she would tuck me in under a gorgeous duvet and sing me Italian lullabies. And the food was out of this world. Everyone in the tiny place, there were maybe six people, were smiling like Cheshire cats. We knew something that no one else knew.
We went to Coney Island, where everything is freshly painted and the boardwalk is new. We went to the Rockaways, too, where we did not feel like we were in New York anymore, and where everyone had a gleam in their eye.
We have seen some great movies, but I don’t feel like talking about them. My opinions seem so uninteresting these days. I’ve cooked some things, but they weren’t so interesting either. Nothing worth sharing, anyway. I think it must be March.
So here are the facts:
March 18: heard the sandhill cranes for the first time.
March 25: planted lettuces and greens in the cold frame.
March 26: ate the last of the red pepper sauce, my absolute favorite thing I canned last year (even better than the tomatillo jam). Please germinate, you peppers!
Come soon, spring. Life gets so boring when we can’t go outside and dig in the dirt.