The Other Side of the World

In 5 simple steps -

survey the great outdoors

select your greenery

chop and mix (violet greens, lambs quarter, chives, thyme, egg, s & p)

cast into pan ~ parmigiana atop

spring brekkie

1. I’m packing up all our sweet little new-baby diapers to be sent off to my dear (very pregnant) friend in Colorado. Sniff.

2. My baby has made me proud, exhibiting true wild-child tendencies, by consuming her first non-mama food: part of a dandelion flower. Her pick.
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3. For those who keep asking: we are jetting off to the far South parts (let me spell it out here: New Zealand) in 7 weeks. Let the on-call-midwifery-student-mama maelstrom begin!

Clearly, do not mess with the consumption of spoons!

Exibit A: apparently our child does not enjoy having her diaper changed on the front lawn of the Supreme Court.

I, on the other hand, have become inured to exposure now that half of the people in the nation’s capital have seen my breasts this weekend whilst placating unreasonably sulky fellow car travellers. Well, one on purpose, all others are merely coincidental.

All hail public tolerance to baby-nourishing, and clean lawns. Justice, indeed.

Today the love-nut and I, finding ourselves alone on a Saturday, set forth for the market with an inquisitiveness bound with skepticism. This latter thought stemming from the fact that our only proof of its existence was the lovely daddy pointing his wiry stems in the direction of a box store  parking lot in the middle of non-descript strip mall wasteland and proclaiming that on Saturdays there would be a market there. Given that the lovely daddy, in all his loveliness, is not what one would describe as a coinesseur of independent organic farms in quite the same way I am, I was holding my breath.

Having braved the onslaught of overly friendly bus-going denizens intent on engaging me in the same type of social flirtation that my baby seems to crave, we arrived at the large box store behind a gas station. Suspicion mounted.

It was then I noticed a small, worn path through the shrivelled road-side grass just where the bus had deposited us. Picking our way downhill, past the empty propane tanks and air pump and through the gate proclaiming entrance to clients/tenants only we braved on.

And then, rising like Atlantis from the pavement - vans and small trucks spilling forth wild, springy, good things. Fresh-shrouded in moist-crumbled dirt and rural dew and the magic of growing.

Thus we spent a happy hour strolling, picking through piles of greens, chatting (I seem to much prefer market-vendor chat to bus-stranger chat) and, since the love-nut was involved - lots of public nipple groping and grazing.

Tonight’s dinner bowl brimmed with the fruits of our expedition. Soup thick with last seasons red potatoes, deep-green stinging nettles, delicate tang of lovage and - the crowning acheivement - the sweet spring cream of fresh goat milk.

I mean, raw milk in Canada is illegal, and we only procured it to feed to our pets.

Fingers tingling with the brush of nettles, bellies warmly thrumming, the pleasant, happy happenstance of spring Alchemy.