Refuge

The little garden is very green, a small echo of the park and wild spaces nearby. There has been a lot of rain. In the pots perennials are growing taller daily, working towards summer bloom that will last until frost.

 The green suits me. It's restful and varied, and the older I get the longer I can look at leaves. They're very quiet. The world is not.

Morse

Meet Morse Jones. They're a groundhog (he/she, we don't know). Morse, for obvious reasons, and Jones, because since the pandemic's worst days, when Green-Wood's side gates first opened permanently to the community, we have been calling a family of groundhogs that emanates from a burrow nearby The Joneses. 

Morse is very pleased with the grass situation, currently. Nice and tender.

Morse has been sending SOS's into the ether, but we're not sure any help is coming.

Peonies, two ways

On Monday I bought pink peonies in tight bud. $15 for three stems. Around the corner they are $20, and fully blown. Walking an extra 10 minutes gives me more days of flowers and money to spare. I photographed them today, Wednesday, in the evening. They have opened and smell exactly like roses.

I moved their vase to the stone table for our supper. After supper, they stay out on the terrace in the cool evening and cooler night, so they last a little longer. It's warmer indoors, and we're probably still a few weeks away - I hope - from succumbing to central air. 

Early in the month, when we had a brief heat wave, we closed all the windows and turned on that chilled air, and felt coccooned and shut off. It's better now, with open windows and doors, a through-draft, air clogged with pollen, and the singing of robins and mockingbirds, the warning of the kestrel, and the black headed gulls cracking hilarious jokes as they fly high above us, their voices beneath the jets and the choppers and the trucks and modified cars that ride like gunshots down the street.

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Daily, on Instagram

Cassis

I rediscovered a bottle of black currant (cassis, in French) syrup living in the back of the fridge. I made it in that briefest of black currant seasons, in 2023, by layering sugar with the pungent, musky fruit. The dark syrup forms quickly but I leave it in its glass jar for a week or more before straining it. The fermented syrup stays active and alive, so that's why it resides in the cold. Leave that chilled bottle closed at room temperature for even half an hour, and it goes fffft! when you open it. It lives. A delightful probiotic.

The flavor is deep and tart and sweetly intense. And here about a tablespoonful went into a Bombay Sapphire G&T. To be sipped on the terrace with the singing of the robins and the mockingbirds, the constant morse of the sparrows, the high chase-calls of the tilting chimney swifts.

(After the syrup is strained, the leftover black currants do not go to waste. It's either a black currant chutney, a jam, or dried fruit, as an imperative Step 2. In 2023 it was chutney, because I eat more of it than I do jam. At least, I did then. Things change.) 

Seed Bread - nuttily delicious

I served my seed loaves at a picnic recently, and, as is usual with this particular bread, the recipe was requested. Now it's up on Gardenista, via my weekly column.

It can take a long time to develop a recipe, and many, many tests. This is now a regular in my baking rotation, and has been for about two years.  

What's the  neon topping? An intensely savory bean pâté with some raw beet microplaned in at the last minute. The bean recipe is also on Gardenista, if you're desperately curious (it doesn't have to be puréed, but can be eaten as a warm casserole or a cool salad. It's divine).

The bread's appeal, I think, is threefold. One, it tastes very good: The toasted nuttinesss of a flock of seeds is very compelling. Two, it contains no flour, so is gluten-free: That also means it is far healthier than any bread that is flour-based because it is loaded with nutrition and fiber. Still, you feel like you're eating bread, and not something you have to, because it's "good for you." (And if you are sensitive to gluten, what do you miss the most? Bread!) Three - it's easy to make. There is no kneading. After a pan-toast, you mix, pour, and bake. Done.

Four, but no one knows this until after it's made: This seed bread makes the best toast. Ever. For that reason alone I keep it in the freezer, pre-sliced, to toast as needed.

Happy baking! Go and buy your sunflowers seeds now...

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Gluten Free Seed Bread

Magnificat

Nkwe Pirelli. Pirelli to his friends. Puss-Puss to his intimates. Bushy-Brooks to the disrespectful. The cat formerly known as Percy. And Inky, before that.

Outside, now

Evenings have moved outdoors, again, and if we are very lucky, Pirelli joins us. 

Beyond the terrace the horse chestnuts are in bloom, and all around us black locust* trees are dripping with scented white flowers. At flower sellers outside bodegas,  bucketsful of peonies have replaced cold-weather tulips.

Black locust is North American Robinia pseudoacacia. In New York it is a sturdy street tree, and very welcome to bees and foragers. 

Behind the cat and the man, the calamondin tree is loaded. Today, the little, aromatic and very sour fruit will be picked, halved, and laid in salt. 

Let's hear it for the ...

...boys. Both beloved.

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