These spring feet

Took me to the Upper West Side, where there is a sidewalk full of alliums outside the Lincoln Center.

Round the corner to buy cat food for Monsieur Le Chat (who was back at home screaming blue murder). This is the laburnum on Amity Street. It smelled wonderful.

To the Borough Hall Farmers' Market after we came home from the Litter Mob(let) - I'll write about that tomorrow, after the bleach body scrub and stiff drinks wear off and we are sure we have no poison ivy rash. There were flowers, though...nice ones. People, too. Much to think about.

These lilacs were at the market, by the bucketful. I did not buy any. I did buy some pickling cucumber seedlings. To replace my dead ones.

The herbs had real world, excellent prices and were in good condition - this from Wilklow Orchards who sell the irresistible berries in summer.

Spring rhubarb. Every spring I cook with it as a rite of season. Talk about a forager's plant. Japanese knotweed is a shoo in by comparison - rhubarb is quite poisonous, considered as a whole. But I was quite happy with the tart I made on Sunday night- rhubarb, eggs and cream in just-set custard, in a crisp pastry shell.  I will have to make it again to write down the recipe. Details elude me. Three eggs? Just yolks, or one with white...How much cream? How much sugar? The rhubarb melted pinkly into the poaching syrup so that when I stirred it, it gently reclined, the sweetly sour strands bending with the current of the moving cream.

And my spring flip flops took me to Union Square, where spring broccoli rabe is a sweeter, milder version of its cold weather self. Here, too, I bought leaves like feathers - light beet with ruby veins, dandelions like green paper, oak and Boston lettuce and mustard leaves each lying lightly upon one another, singing of spring.