I sow radishes because of how they are with butter on slices of bread I make with almond flour and because of that night a half dozen decades ago when in a rainy cabin there was nothing to eat but radishes, butter, a rye loaf my mother made, and I ate and ate and ate and because it instantly became, and remains all these decades later, one of my most precious culinary experiences.
A story written for a little girl in France, who speaks both English and French.
The preamble: https://matildamagtree.com/2024/02/29/spring-is-in-the-air/
♣
L’HISTOIRE DE PEPE LE PEW
Asseyez-toi and listen to the story of un homme that smelled in a way that not tout le monde loved.
It was hiver and Pepe le Pew was frois. He needed une maison to stay chaud. He tried un arbre but it was tres windy and his chapeau kept flying off.
He tried the inside of a trrrrrreeeeessssssss ENORME rubber boot (a polka dot one!) he found in a ditch, but it smelled worse than Pepe le Pew. And it had boue and l’eau inside, which was not nice pour dormir.
He tried the nid of a chickadeedeedee (too petite), and the nest of an aigle (too high up to climb every day).
He asked the ecureuil rouge if he would like a roommate and the ecureuil rouge said: are you kidding me??? (which means non)
And then une nuit froide, when the neige was starting to fall, Pepe noticed un chat going under one end of the barn. And he followed the cat (we aren’t sure if the cat is a he or a she so we will refer to them as they) and the cat fell asleep on a little nid of newspapers and dry bits of feuilles and they looked very chaud et confortable.
So Pepe le Pew, very politely, and very quietly, made himself une petite nid at the other end of the grange and there he stayed tout l’hiver and came out during the jour to enjoy the soleil and to find little things to eat and then went back under his end of the barn to snuggle up for the nuit.
And the chat didn’t mind one bit.
And so they spent the hiver together, tranquillement.
But that’s not the fini of the histoire because even though by printemps Pepe le Pew had moved out of his nid d’hiver he had left behind a fragrance in the grange that when the door was opened for the premiere time (by moi), made moi rire et rire et rire (parce que I don’t mind the fragrance) and say, ah, c’est evident you were ici, Pepe le Pew!! and I’m heureux that we could give you a maison d’hiver. Bonne chance, bonne chance!
Come back again l’annee prochaine!
La fin.
♣
♣
Following my instinct I stop at a playground early, early, in the morning with the sun up only an hour, still inching above the treeline. I surprise myself as I stand in mountain pose a moment and feel the warmth of it.
I do not go on the monkey bars because I do warrior I and II instead.
And I do not go on the slidey thing but use the vertical posts either side of it for balance in king dancer pose.
I do a version of sun salutation and the breathing is exceptional.
And before I know it…
…I’ve been there long enough for the sky to turn blue blue blue.
And then I climb up the ladder and slide into the day.
The ice has finally melted and walking is once again possible in the ravine and woods and parks without cleats or sticks or fear of sliding down some never before noticed incline.
I go in search of signs of early blooms.
I know where to look for coltsfoot and bloodroot, banks of bluebells and trilliums but those aren’t up yet. It’s mostly very brown and then a sweet surprise among the scruff, a different kind of sign, one that indicates I’m not alone in my thoughts.
For a while the only bit of colour I find is dog poop bags and I wonder (and I’m forever wondering this) what’s the point of bagging poop if you’re just going to leave it hanging on a fence or tossed under a tree or someplace you think is out of sight? (Not a rhetorical question.)
I rarely pick up this kind of litter.
There’s plenty of other stuff but I’ve forgotten to bring a litter bag and so I make little nests of what I find with the idea of picking it up and carrying as much as I can in my hands on the way back.
But it’s soon obvious there’s more than I can carry so I need a bag, and I know I’ll find one because it’s like magic… it’s like the universe is saying thank you for cleaning me… and, oh, I hear you need a bag… here’s one…
And then… presto bongo… there one is.
So I walk and pick up litter and wonder why there aren’t more garbage cans and who are these people dropping stuff all over the place because I never actually see anyone do it…
and then I notice the way spring has this sound, the birds, like they have a whole new repertoire and the light is different and then I see a red-winged blackbird and I remember something I read earlier this very morning in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek…
about how she was once startled by the hundreds of red-winged blackbirds that flew out of a tree and how the tree didn’t look any different when they were gone because it’s like they’d been invisible in there, and still were… because even though there were hundreds a moment ago, there was suddenly not one to be seen anywhere…
and how this reminded me of the very same experience when I was kayaking one morning when hundreds of red-winged blackbirds flew out of the reeds at sunrise… and just as quickly disappeared…
somewhere.
.
All winter it’s been almost impossible to walk the beach. So much forever-never-melting ice this year. And when it did melt, it just froze up the next day even icier. So, yes, it’s been impossible to walk the beach.
But… the ice is now gone, mostly, and the snow is being slowly replaced with snowdrops…
… and just the other day I was at the beach and it’s all sand and pebbles again, and ridges of stones where a recent wind storm has pushed them several metres from shore. (Given the size of stones one wonders how that is even possible.)
Seasonal differences are extraordinary but, even more extraordinary is the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) transformation of every day, the way the water changes colour, the size and sound and movement of waves, their connection to moon and tides and us.
And beach glass.
And whatever it’s connected to. (Sometimes cartwheeling along the shore with my nieces… those who know me… I can hear you laughing!... we imagine the maybe-stories attached to the glass we find. And sometimes I do the imagining on my own, in which case pirates with a penchant for expensive olive oil very often figure into things.)
The type of glass found in various places (these things are predictable to a point), on different shorelines, is fascinating. For instance, my Lake Ontario beach offers up big numbers of small pieces. I used to think they were a good size, but they’re really quite tiny compared to pieces I’ve since seen on PEI (though I find much less of it there; it’s possible I don’t know where to look and no one’s telling me); also small compared with what I understand is found on the shores of the St. Lawrence, and elsewhere, which begs a Why?… what makes the difference in what washes up? Not that it matters because a piece of smooth glass winking at me from the sand is a joy, no matter the size. And if it’s not quite ‘cooked’, i.e. entirely smooth, I toss it back into the water. Apparently to be fully cooked takes decades, between fifty to a hundred years on average.
If you’re still reading this it might be that you have some small interest in beach glass, or maybe you haven’t quite finished your tea yet. In any case, here’s some glassy trivia gathered from various sites for glass nerds—
Lavender glass is called ‘sun glass’ because it’s glass made with manganese, which, if left in a sunny window, will turn various shades of purple. (And can be dated to around the time of WWI, when the bleaching agent used to make it clear couldn’t be sourced and manganese was used instead.)
Red and orange are rare because gold was required to make red and orange glass, resulting in much less being made in those colours.
And that frosted look? Comes from lime leaching out of the glass over time.
But my FAVOURITE bit of sea glass trivia is that the cobalt blue pieces could very well come from bottles once made to contain poison. (Also possibly Vick’s VapoRub; Evening in Paris perfume [oh my god, the very mention of which takes me back to my family’s bathroom shelves, home to a small bottle of EIP I’d given my mother for xmas and which I pray she never actually wore though fear she did]; Noxema, and a certain brand of either Milk of Magnesia or Bromo Seltzer.) The poison angle is so much better though. Apparently when lights were dim and not everyone could read, a trip to the medicine cabinet (where, unwisely perhaps, both medicines and poisons were kept)(poisons being useful for ‘some’ things) mistakes were made. Move the poison I say but, no, someone thought it simpler to change the colour of the poison bottles, to cobalt blue, as well as the shape (triangular, etc.) so they could be both seen and/or ‘felt’ in a dimly lit room in the once-upon-a-times…
And should you be out glassing, here’s a list of glasses from the book Pure Sea Glass, by Richard LaMotte, who is some kind of travelling guru on the subject, giving seminars and talks all over the world and about whom much can be read. (And whose job wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.)
My dad used to say
that
the best
time
of year
in the garden
when
nothing much
is out yet
and so
you can see
every bit
of the
nothing much.
I make exceptions for certain people.
And dogs.
And always birdsong.
But this morning I would welcome the company of a serious bird brain, someone who could tell me who’s singing from the top of every tree, following me with very obvious intent to serenade.
The sound is too big for a chickadee dee dee dee.
And it’s not a robin, or a cardinal (& so ends my song recognition repertoire).
A botanist would be handy too. I’d ask what is this shrub in pink bloom that every year I swear I’ll make a note to go back and find when it’s fruiting so I know what kind of shrub it is and then always forget to check…
But the only person I see is a guy standing at the creek, facing the morning sun, just standing there, and then he raises his arms in salutation.
I recognize the impulse.
And so I walk very quietly by…
I woke this morning with
a yen to swim
in the Indian Ocean, to lick
the tile walls of Morocco, sunbathe
nude on the side of a grassy hill overlooking
the coast of Africa. I wanted to tear
silk underwear to shreds
and tie the rags to the tail
of a kite—
sing to purring elephants at dawn
and ride caterpillars to the tops
of mossy trees. I woke this morning,
then stepped outside
—never happier to be home.
♥
Open-eyed meditation this morning as I watch through the window and a break in the trees a cardinal preening, waiting for his date to the cardinal ball.
They fly off together and then a man in pale turquoise shirt and dark jeans gets into his car and flies off to work.
Nothing else for a while and cat #1, curled up at the very top of her indoor climbing tree facing the window, slowly closes her eyes while cat #2 finds a spot on the carpet to attend to her tail.
Ears perk up, mine too, when suddenly on a not so far away treetop the music of the cardinal ball begins… but it’s merely soundtrack to the contentment of a belly full of tinned turkey and kibble, and soon ears relax and all eyes close.
p.s. and yes, that’s a tulip in the pic
A happy long weekend to you!
Don’t fret if you don’t see honey bees in your yard.
According to this piece by Eric Atkins, there are dozens of other kinds.
All are important. All are pollinators.
And they want to live in the messy bits of your garden.
So make sure you have a few messy bits.
Piles of rocks and sticks.
Also a fairie beach does not go amiss…
General rule of thumb appears to be this: don’t over-rake, over-prune or anally tidy every last bit of the outdoors.
If you must be anal, you can always go inside and clean your house.
As for those honeybees…seems we ought not to become amateur bee keepers as we risk doing more harm than good in spreading disease and parasites.
In other words: leave beekeeping to the pros.
And create friendly environments instead for all those OTHER bees, i.e. leafcutters, bumblebees, sweaters and miners.
Bonus: because the natural world is naturally diverse, to allow a bit of the ‘natural’ will result in fewer bad bug infestations.
Also,
—when buying plants and seeds, check with the grower or nursery about use of neonicotinoids. More and more growers are choosing not to use them, but only because more and more people are asking questions and raising a fuss.
Ask questions.
Raise a fuss.
The bees will thank you.
And we’ll continue thanking the bees.
As we should.
Without them we’re pretty much landscaped toast.
Matilda Magtree 