Waiting for my garden

I shovelled way the last chunky pile of snow that was lurking in a dark corner. The ground still freezes, my grass is brown and my gardens are filled with scruffy dead plants. If I didn’t have pictures of my beautiful flowers from last summer I am not sure that I would believe that they ever existed.

I moved into this house last June. Believe it or not that is early spring. We don’t plant things outdoors until the last weekend in May or the first weekend in June. I planted some snapdragons and nicotinas in large green pots by the front door.

As the days and weeks passed I noticed some small green spears poking up through the earth in my garden. I was shocked when these spears can into full bloom of rich and beautiful tiger lilies.

A few weeks ago I bought some seeds and soil and those little peat cups and plastic trays. I bought nasturtiums, salvia, thunbergia vine (black eyed Susan), purple morning glories, heavenly blue morning glories, cosmos (lady birds) and coreopsis. This weekend I am going get them started and plant them in the ground outside in six weeks.

Cruise and Wait and Cruise and Rise

Easter has never really had any religious meaning to me. As a kid it was all about the Easter bunny scattering a trail of chocolate through out the house for my brother, sister and I to gorge ourselves on sometimes resulting, in my case, in vomiting from over consumption. Since moving out on my own he or she (I suspect the Easter bunny is a she – who else would distribute that much chocolate?) seems to have lost my address.

The other major indicator of Easter is the plethora of delicious homemade hot crossed buns from a recipe has been handed down from generation to generation on my mom’s side of the family. The last few years (since moving to the other side of the country from my parents and not being able to raid their hot crossed bun supply) I have joined in on the tradition and have baked my own. Now I am a vegan so I had to tweak the recipe a bit but when I follow the directions correctly (I have a habit of messing up the wet to dry ratio creating barely edible hot crossed pucks) I make a pretty darn good bun. I question the integrity of those small strange candied fruits and choose to replace them with dried cranberries and blueberries.

(the dough pre-rolling pin)
I don’t have a rolling pin but have found in past years that wine bottles work great! We drank all the wine the other night and actually took all the empties to the bottle depot. I was worried that I would have nothing to roll the dough out with but in the dark recesses of the back of the fridge I found one of those skinny bottles of dessert wine. It is a homemade dessert wine and I am afraid of the hangover potential lurking inside the bottle waiting spew on me from morning to night so I have not tasted it yet. I imagine one day when a bunch of friends are over and we have drank the liquor cabinet dry we will break into this bottle. Until then I think it is a handy little rolling pin.

I think I will head out on my cruiser while I am waiting fo the dough to rise.

The Finished Product!!! I think this is my best turn out yet. The only problem is...i ate too many!