German potato salad

I cook for a person who won't eat mayonnaise, so German-style potato salad is an alternative to the fattening kind made with gobs of real mayonnaise, eggs, celery and sweet pickle. I think American potato salad is delicious, but that might be because I don't get it very often.

On the other hand, served warm or at room temperature, German potato salad is lighter and goes better with almost any meat. I remember my grandmother Anna used to make it with roast chicken for Sunday dinner, along with spaetzle noodles and gravy.
As usual, I don't have a real recipe to share with you, but nothing could be easier to make by taste. Of course you start by boiling and draining the potatoes, then slice them thinly. Mince 2 or 3 slices of smoky bacon and sauté until crispy.
There are no unusual ingredients. I chopped some chives from the garden, because I didn't have green or red onions on hand.
Add the bacon (with a little of the fat) and sprinkle the potatoes with whole celery seed, about a teaspoon of sugar, some salt and pepper. I think this salad is better with plain old cider vinegar and vegetable oil, but I've also tried olive oil and white wine vinegar. Use a generous hand with the oil, the salad should be shiny and not dry.
It was good the other night-- we had chicken baked in the oven with a Parmesan breadcrumb crust.

They're back...

Each spring I say I'm not going to buy so many new plants. Ha! I'm a sucker for the weird grasses and sedums, especially black and gray ones. We've had wild weather in Seattle this week. Yesterday I beat the storm home, and dumped these plants at the back door right before the deluge started again. Bright sun in the morning, followed by heavy rain and thunderstorms, even hail in places.

My barn friends are on the lookout for swallows; they're late. Some sort of gnat plague just hatched in the damp weather, pestering the horses. We need some flying insect eaters. Yesterday afternoon, Jennifer our barn manager called me at home to say she saw the first one, and no doubt about it. They found our little barn again-- and what a nice person she is to call, just to tell me they're back...

Willa Cather's Nebraska

Barren Prairie
Allie Benbrook

Imagine a world without TV, radio, electricity, or cars-- no airplanes, computers, texting, email, movies, video games, Ipods or cell phones. Imagine a world where life revolves around the seasons, crops and caring for your animals. Where kids did chores after school instead of being chauffeured to activities. Then imagine this life in a place as bleak and flat and dull as rural Nebraska in the late 1800's. Finally, imagine young people who don't know the meaning of the word bored. Who find enchantment in nature, and happiness in family and friendship.

This is Willa Cather's world in her novels "Oh, Pioneers" and "My Antonia." Cather moved to Nebraska as a child in 1883. These stories are beautiful reminiscences, but there isn't anything saccharine sweet about them. There was no shortage of hardship and tragedy. I like to read these books again every few years-- the writing is wonderful, and they put our soft lives into perspective. But you have to appreciate this irony: I just downloaded a free copy of "My Antonia" to read on my Kindle...what would Cather think of that?

Here's a quote from the book about the Nebraska winter:

Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall.

Well, some things never change.

Snake plants and Mother-in-Law Tongues

Evil sounding names for nice houseplants. I always thought they were the same, but the Internet tells me the snake plant (below) has white horizontal bands, and the mother-in-law tongue (above) has leaves edged with yellow. Nice.
I put some of my scruffy houseplants outside to fend for themselves, so I've been on the lookout for new ones. I dug this big snake plant off a packed pallet at Home Depot; really a bad place to buy houseplants, although you can get lucky if they're fresh off the truck. It was top heavy and root bound and tipped over in the car, making an awful mess. Snaky thing. I transplanted it into this heavy blue pot, and put it where it won't be moved until Christmas. They like low light and low water-- in short, neglect.

Snake plant (Sansevieria trifasciata) is native to places like the Congo and Nigeria. It's supposedly one of the best houseplants for removing pollution from indoor air.

Spring picnic

Nova and her dad, getting ready to leave on a weekend hike...
Amanda and Roger in the spring sunshine (he's always ready for a family walk!)
And Nova eating oranges for lunch...

Amanda was telling me yesterday about the latest milestones:
Nova crawls everywhere-
Nova pulls herself up to standing every chance she gets-
Nova drinks from a sippy cup-
Nova says ma-ma and da-da-
Nova likes avocados and oranges-
Nova laughs at funny, rude noises (and lots of other things, too)
Nova steals the show wherever she goes!

"Now that lilacs are in bloom..."

Perhaps the most famous poem about lilacs is Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. It was written as an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, right after he was assassinated in 1865. Once upon a time, every schoolchild read it, or (heaven forbid) had to memorize all sixteen stanzas.

An old and beloved shrub on farms, ranches and in city gardens, lilacs are mentioned in many works of literature.

But my favorite "lilac lines" are from a T.S. Eliot poem called The Portrait of a Lady. This poem has a story of sorts. A young man is visiting an upper class English lady of a certain age, with whom he's had a relationship. He tells her he's leaving to take an extended trip abroad. She listens and puts on a brave face, but she has a few sharp words about "youth."
Here's the lilac stanza:

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands';
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
'You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations it cannot see.'

I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea.

from,
Portrait of a Lady
T.S. Eliot

New window blinds

Hard work and angst goes into picking out new blinds. First the sales lady comes to call. She measures everything and compliments you on your "period" house (that means old.) Then she makes a strong case for her most expensive product (surprise!) solid wood shutters. Hum-mm...in our golden years, I hope we're living where the palm trees sway. And I'm not sure I'll even be on earth long enough to get my enjoyment out that investment.

So, you take it from there and start down the material list: wood, wood veneer, something called faux wood, and something called composite. The sales lady does not believe in cheap aluminum blinds. Oh yes, then you need to pick from dozens of colors. By this time your head is spinning, and the sales lady hasn't even taken out her calculator. By the time she leaves, you've looked at so many different things you can't remember what you ordered. You just hope for the best.

We've been watching the television series Madmen, so I must have been influenced by the old-fashioned wide Venetian blinds on those perfect 1960's sets. I finally went with smooth two inch horizontals in a cream color that matches the trim. Simple and nice!

Here's a view of blogger central with the new blinds. And when the afternoon sun blazes in, no more fumbling with fusty, dusty tab top drapes.

Happy Birthday, April

Happy birthday to my dear niece, April. I hope you have a wonderful day, and give a big kiss to Hayden from his Aunt Suzy.

OOOXXX

April rain

The curled hosta leaves are beautiful when they first emerge, fresh and clean in the spring. Hostas are ornamental plants that die to the ground in the winter, then come back like a miracle. Most have flowers, although nothing to write home about; the attraction is the foliage. They look like something the slugs would enjoy chomping up, but I don't have that problem here.

It's raining this morning, and I'm looking out on a green jungle. The apple tree is blooming, and the roses have buds. The robin has been chirping since 4:15. A few days of warm sun, and the garden will go wild.
April Rain Song
by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon
your head with silver
liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a
lullaby
The rain makes still pools
on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little
sleep song on our roof at
night
And I love the rain.

A week of whale news

We don't see this often, so it was big news when a gray whale washed up on a private beach near West Seattle. I didn't go down to see him-- this picture is from the local blog. After much toil and trouble, he was finally towed away at high tide for an autopsy. I heard on the news they found a pair of sweatpants, 20 plastic plastic bags, a golf ball and other "miscellaneous things" in the poor creature's belly, but cause of death was still inconclusive.

Gray whales migrate through Puget Sound each spring, and some individuals are even recognized by name. Most are close to starvation when they get here, having spent 4 or 5 months in southern waters with nothing to eat. Passing through Puget Sound, they have to contend with heavy shipping and industrial waters. Not to mention, pants and bags.

Another unfortunate gray whale was in the news last week after being attacked by a pod of transient British Columbia orcas (killer whales) off Whidbey Island. It was witnessed and filmed by a boatload of shocked whale-watchers. This particular whale is a favorite known as "Patch," and his comings and goings in Puget Sound have been followed since 1991. The British Columbia orcas have a taste for mammals, and prey on the gray calves as they cruise north with their mothers, although attacks on adults are rare. Our Puget Sound resident orcas prefer to eat Chinook salmon, not mammals.

But as we know from other grisly news, killer whales are intelligent and unpredictable animals, and sometimes do bad things "just for fun." The B.C. transient orcas rammed poor "Patch" several times, and he rolled on his back in front of the tour boat to protect himself. It is unknown how badly he was hurt, but he was spotted later resting in shallow water, and seemed to be OK.

Beethoven and puppets

Yesterday afternoon at the Symphony, we heard Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 played by Horacio Gutierrez, followed by Stravinsky's Petrouchka ballet score in the second half.

In December 1808, Beethoven played the newly composed No. 4 and conduced an entire concert that included premiers of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasia, Op. 80 for solo piano and several other works. The Vienna hall was freezing, the orchestral was unrehearsed, the audience was baffled, and Beethoven was probably in a bad mood. The entire concert was described as a "famous disaster," and the 4th Piano Concerto wasn't played again in Beethoven's lifetime. We're talking about shivering through many hours of music. It's hard to imagine it, sitting in a comfortable concert hall on a warm spring afternoon in Seattle.
Here's John at intermission, getting a bit of fresh air on the outdoor deck at Benaroya Hall. We enjoyed seeing our seat pals Betsy and Paul, and getting caught up on family news.
In the second half, we heard Stravinsky's Petrouchka ballet. This is the story of three puppets who come to life and then act out a sad, human story. Listening to ballet scores can drag at the symphony, but this score was exciting even without the beautiful dancers to act out the drama. It was easy to imagine the fantasy love triangle of Petrouchka, the Ballerina and the Moor.

It was a nice afternoon of music, then we went home and ate turkey enchiladas for dinner. And another weekend bites the dust...

Tulipmania

The classic Dutch method of planting tulips is color-coordinated, perfect rows. It makes a display like nothing else for a few short weeks. In formal (and rich!) gardens, the plants are then pulled up and thrown away to make room for annuals, and the beds are designed again with fresh bulbs in the fall.

For home gardeners, this seems wasteful, not to mention lots of work. But the problem with keeping spring bulbs in the ground is they need to die back naturally after bloom to replenish the bulb. This leaves an unsightly mess of yellow drooping leaves for several weeks, just when you want your garden looking spiffy for early summer.

I was reading in a magazine (Martha Stewart, again) that it's become trendy to naturalize tulips and place bulbs more-or-less randomly in perennial beds. Once the tulips fade, the other flowers take over while the tulip leaves have a chance to die back and regenerate.

When you've been doing something for years out of simple laziness, it's always nice to hear from Martha that you've been stylish all along. I haven't planted new tulips bulbs for a long time, but plenty still come back willy-nilly each April. They don't multiply in the ground, but the big yellows and reds are especially long-lived.
Tulip season doesn't last long, but what a wonderful flower. In fact, you could say tulips are the world's most coveted flower. Ever heard the phrase Tulipmania?

Ambrosius Bosschaert

Friends are important

Here's a few pictures Amanda took this week of Nova and her baby friends. These little folks were all born within a few weeks of each other. Talk about lifelong friendships for babies and mommies!

Enjoying the spring sunshine after a long winter...

Sharing a few laughs...

Or a private joke between girls.

Of course, being alone isn't bad either--as long as you have just a few things to play with!

And the livin' is easy...

One of the miracles of our city barn is there are several grass pastures the horses can enjoy in the summer. You can see how completely urban the setting is, with houses surrounding the property on all sides. Which makes this little horse oasis even more magical.

We can't use the pastures in the winter, or they would be churned into a sea of mud. In the wet months, the horses are outside in gravel paddocks instead. But when the weather dries out and grass starts growing again, the pastures are "open" for summer enjoyment. For fairness sake, the horses rotate turns in the fields, so a few times a week they can eat grass and roll around on the warm ground.

The sweet, green grass must taste wonderful in the spring. After I rode yesterday, Sizzle didn't lift her head all afternoon. She loves dandelions, especially the flowers. Lucky horse...spending the afternoon at an all-you-can-eat salad bar, and oblivious to the city around her.

Malibu Potteries

Many vintage California homes feature beautiful Malibu Pottery tiles. The May issue of Martha Stewart magazine has an article about the exquisite Adamson House in Malibu. What really caught my eye was this magnificent "carpet" made of 670 tiles, right down to the fringe. It was designed by Malibu Potteries for the house in 1929. A detail of this hall floor is featured on page 92, as well as pictures of other rooms all lavishly decorated with California tiles.

The tile factory in Malibu operated for only seven years (1926-1932) so as you can imagine, these vibrant and intricate tiles (made with superior clay) are treasured collectibles. Enough to get the Antiques Roadshow folks excited. They're featured extensively in Adamson House, which is considered "The Shrine" of California tiles. When the house was built, a single family owned all the land in sight: 13,000 acres of ranch land high above the ocean. No mansions, no roads, no tourists.

Now owed by the state of California, the house is a museum that showcases the tile and the region's history. I'd love to see it the next time we're in southern California. If you don't get Martha's magazine, the museum also has a virtual tour on their website:

http://www.adamsonhouse.org/Tour/tour.html

Baby plums

This is what baby plums look like-- the little green nubs haven't fallen off (yet) but the jury is still out. Did the bees do their job? If so, we should finally have another nice crop this year. This variety is the Italian Prune, wonderful for cooking and eating. John asks for plum kuchen every summer. It just isn't the same when you have to buy the plums.

This is just to say

I have eaten
The plums
That were in
The icebox

And which
You were probably
Saving for breakfast.

Forgive me
They were delicious
So sweet
And so cold.

William Carlos Williams

Steamed mussels

Either you like them, or you don't. And the quality and size varies, too. A mouthful of too large mussel is not a pleasant sensation, and the tiny ones are hardly worth the effort. Since our new QFC opened nearby (Kroger to those of you back East) I've been getting good quality fish and shellfish at their counter service. Nice buys too-- these mussels were on special for $2.99 a pound last week.
Steaming is the basic method of mussel cooking, but there are all kinds of tasty concoctions like curry, wine and coconut milk that make them taste much better, and give you a nice "broth" to sop up with bread.
For these, I caramelized a generous amount of garlic in olive oil and butter, then thew in some parsley and a chopped tomato.
Here's the secret: put the mussels in the pot with the garlic, and add a generous splash of white wine. When the mussels open, they release plenty of water, so you don't need to cover them with liquid; it just dilutes the flavor of the "broth." Then put a tight lid on, and cook them on high for five minutes or so. (They turn to rubber if you boil them to death.)
We had a nice treat the other night with some Dungeness crab legs and good bread.

The Chinese Garden

Several times a year, we like to visit the Seattle Chinese Garden which is under development near South Seattle Community College. It's never crowded on weekends, and the 4+ acre garden is filled with unusual flowers and rare plants. It also has lots of birds, and some interesting downward looking views of Seattle across a large greenbelt.

The Seattle Chinese Garden is being designed by artisans from Seattle's sister city, Chongquing. It's a big, ambitious project moving forward in slow stages, and construction is just starting on the large pavilions. A group of 30 Chinese artists will be living and working on the site this spring.
Eventually, it will be one of the largest Sichuan style gardens outside of China, and presumably a busy community attraction. But in the meantime, its still a great place for a quiet stroll. Here is John admiring the conifers.

Many were blooming with colorful and unusual cones.

A Chinese garden is designed to represent a symbolic microcosm of the universe, using the four elements: water, stone, plants and structure.

From the Chinese Garden website:

The Chinese garden ideal is to provide its visitor with access to philosophical wisdom, spiritual insight, emotional balance and physical health.

The colors were vibrant on a brilliant spring day...

And the rhododendrons and azaleas just starting to bloom.

Martha Washington

We had odd weather in Seattle yesterday. It was dry, but with a cool wind blowing and high overcast that didn't clear out until late afternoon. John mowed the lawn for a second time, and I went to Costco in the morning.

Shopping at Costco is like a competitive sport. I don't know why that is, because there is plenty for everyone. Something about that big parking lot and warehouse makes people barge around rudely, or maybe they just want to get in and out as fast as possible. Who can blame them? Anyway, speaking of competitive, I was one of the first in the door at 9:30, and snatched up a flat of Martha Washington geraniums before they were pawed over. I believe this one is called "Halo." Dark red flowers trimmed in silver; it should be pretty in clay pots around the mossy old fountain.

After I planted the kitchen window box with plain red geraniums, I hosed down the deck and it was dry with a few minutes. There's already lots of radiant energy from the sun, and despite the clouds and wind, a feeling that spring is winning out.

So nice...

Here's some views of our newly painted rooms, and what a nice change from dirty beige. Take a look at that ceiling molding Tom painted perfectly. I watched him do it, and he made it look easy. It is not easy-- there isn't a straight line or even surface in this house.Our favorite books are going back ever-so-slowly...
Here's corner of the dining room, with more molding professionally done for the first time. This may look boring, but after all those dark walls and clutter, I think it's restful. The new cream colored blinds will be installed in a week or so. They're two inches wide, so it should be a "chunkier" old-fashioned look.
And the clean mantle, with just some pottery and the tourist trap painting I bought in China years ago. Suddenly, less is more.