Mission Accomplished: Strawberries

Ken with our 8 quarts of berries!

It's that time of year and the strawberry fields were calling me. Ken and I caught the Surry Ferry after lunch and headed to College Run Farms to pick our own. Between picking them in the field and washing and sorting them at home and taste-testing along the way, I think I've gotten more than my daily recommended allowance of vitamin C for today. Yum. Oh, and we had some homemade strawberry ice cream at the farm too, of course. Extra yum.

Gulls at the Ferry dock

Of course, I miss Hidden Brook Farm in Toano. As far as I can tell, it was the last pick-your-own strawberry farm in James City County. Farmer Hunt died this past year and his family decided to discontinue farming. The thing about going to Mr. Hunt's was that you could always come back with honey and eggs and whatever else he might be selling that day. He will be missed. His farm and his love of farming have slipped away.

The 1st strawberry from my garden

Now it's back to the strawberries. I'll consult some of my old recipes. Ken has gone to the store for pound cake (instead of shortcake) and other dinner ingredients. Two of our boys will be here for dinner to enjoy them with us. And I'll take some strawberries and cake to Mom and Dad when I visit them tomorrow.

P.S. The strawberries in my garden are ripening too. I picked and ate the first one (pictured above!) this morning. Delicious.

March Blooms on Our Wedding Week

Wedding Day Morning

When my daughter announced that March 24 would be her wedding day, I never imagined what a beautiful day it would be. Oh, of course the day was beautiful inside! But it was unexpectedly beautiful outside as well. Redbud and dogwood lined the Colonial Parkway for those traveling from Gloucester to Williamsburg. New leaves painted the sky bright green -- an appropriate tone since the wedding colors were navy blue and Granny Smith apple green.

Wild Columbine

On Tuesday before the wedding, on my way home from teaching school in Gloucester, I stopped at Green Planters and discovered that many new perennials were in stock. I bought blooming Jacob's Ladder to intersperse with my early-blooming Golden Ragwort. The owner told me that many more native plants were expected on Thursday, so I stopped there again. I bought Virginia Bluebells, Creeping Wood Phlox, and Cinnamon Ferns. They fit nicely with the blooming Wild Columbine and, of course, Daffodils that have been blooming since late February. I planted through the twilight, until dark fell and the first guests arrived.

Our family gathers around

My husband found the perfect quote for me in a comic strip that appeared in the Washington Post that Thursday: "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt" (Margaret Atwood). A little bit of it was still under my nails, freshly manicured on Friday in a opaque shade of buff pink.

On Saturday it rained midday, hard enough to wash the church parking lot. Streams yellow with pollen carried it away just in time. The bride was told that rain on your wedding day is a sign of good luck. As the guests began to arrive, so did the late afternoon sunshine.

Early March Blooms

Golden Ragwort - first blooms

On March 28, 2011, I took photos of the flowers, shrubs, and trees in my yard and wrote about them in a blog post so that I would have a record of botanical progress to have for year-to-year comparison. Well, as I said in last weekend's post about a Mourning Cloak Butterfly, 2012 has been a year for the record books. Today, when I looked around the yard, I saw Golden Ragwort beginning to bloom and it is pictured here. (The photo of Golden Ragwort in full bloom that I inserted in another post last year was taken on April 19, 2011!) So, yes indeed, things are blooming earlier.

Pulmonaria (Lungwort)

Another plant that I mentioned was blooming on March 28, 2011 in last year's post was Pulmonaria, or Lungwort. Like daffodils, which have been blooming for several weeks now, the Lungwort is native to Europe and Asia. I've watched these plants with interest, of course, (my yard was appropriately full of blooming Daffodils on St. David's Day) but  they are not native to North America and I've really been paying closer attention to my native plants. I want to see how they are reacting to climate change.  (In which, the polls say, more people now believe.)

Wild Columbine

Another native plant that I saw sending up shoots and preparing to bloom on March 28 last year was Wild Columbine. Yes, the same plant in my yard is just about at the same point in its preparation to bloom this year, but more than 3 weeks earlier. In another post from last year, I noted that I was enjoying watching Wild Columbine bloom in April.

The botanical progress that I documented last year showed trees leafing at the same time that the native plants were blooming. I'm not seeing that this year, but the buds are fat. Any day now.

My daughter is getting married in 3 weeks. Will the Dogwoods and other trees be leafing out by then? I do remember that on my first wedding day, 28 years ago on Derby Day in early May, the Dogwoods were beautiful in Williamsburg!

May I Recommend the Carrot Top Tea?

My garden in a jungle of plant parts that I don't eat! Granted, they are food for the insects that make the soil, but many are quite edible by humans if we could find a tasty use. Carrot tops are especially worrisome to me because they just look so green, healthy, and edible. I guess it's their similarity to parsley. When you pull up 4 or 5 carrots for a salad, you end up with a peck of greens.

Last year I found a recipe for soup that included carrot tops. It was okay, but not good enough to try again. The greens are too bitter for soup, in my opinion. This year, I ran across a recipe for carrot top tea, so thought I'd give it a try. It's for iced tea, but as a Southerner, that's fine by me. I think the carrot top tea is as good or better than most of the herbal teas I've tried. I think I'll try microwaving a cup for hot tea from my next batch.

Here's the recipe. It appears on many websites, so I'm not sure where it originated. My guess is that it's been around for a while, due to the plant's medicinal claims to fame. I've added proportions as a starting point, although you should experiment to make the tea conform to your preference of tea strength.

Carrot Top Tea

Put washed and torn carrot leaves from 5 or 6 carrots in a pot. Pour two quarts of boiling water over them. Leave to steep until the tea is cold. Strain to remove the leaves; put leaves in compost. Place the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator to chill.

According to the folks at the World Carrot Museum, "carrot tops are edible and nutritional, rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. The tops are loaded with potassium, which is what makes them bitter." In addition, the World Carrot Museum (a virtual museum by the way) has dedicated a page to carrot tops with all sorts of information about how great carrot tops are as an antiseptic and for conditions like flatulence and bad breath. The page has recipes that include carrot tops in soups, salads, tobouleh, and gumbo.

Other useful carrot information that I took away from the World Carrot Museum site included storing tips: cut the tops off before you store, put water in the bag to keep carrots from going limp, and store carrots away from fruit because that causes them to emit a gas and become bitter.

Eat more carrots . . . and carrot tops!