How we live

Items on the agenda: Little tender (really) chuck steaks for supper after a meatless week. Courtesy of Los Paisanos. Spinach, which I have been craving, on the side. A rosti-like potato cake, if it works. I've never made one. Frank and Betsy here for supper tomorrow - a pig shoulder to slow-cook with roasted oranges, tomatoes, sweetly smoky ancho peppers; mangos to puree and turn into a granita with lime juice and a thread of tequila running through...or rum? Tortillas to pan-toast at the last minute. I've left something out. Salad? Not sure yet. Maybe jicama and cilantro and fresh orange or grapefruit segments. Avocado, if I can find ripe...

Somewhere, I must plant my 70's-homage pansies. I mean, look at them. I usually go for small, sweet, elegant blue violas. I have no idea what came over me.

Seeds have been sown, but by no means all of them. The table on the terrace has been turned into a potting shed. In the spirit of, Buy first, Google later, I brought home a bag of Fafard Organic Potting Soil from GRDN. As a fulltime garden designer I liked and used Fafard for years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bagsful. I loved the quality of the soil, and so did the plants, and I did not delve into origin or company background. But nowadays that is a sad excuse. We can never say anymore, But I didn't know. I'll write more about soil in another post. For now I need quite a bit, for repotting strawberries and herbs and for filling empty pots.

From the harbour the Staten Island ferry is barking its departure horn in a thin white mist over the water. Somewhere the Frenchman is running, perhaps past the same ferry, perhaps on his way back over the Brooklyn Bridge.

I have potatoes to grate - supper has been late this week as I remain confused by the light and our recent time change. Chilly March has returned, reassuringly, and spring lurks - its best moment, when it is nothing but potential.