Green

Daylilies high as a horse...

Glossy alliums...

Bonsai trees coming back to life...

Hardy geraniums...

Ferns waking up...

I walked around the yard yesterday and snapped these pictures. We can complain about the cool wet weather in Seattle, but we can't complain about a lack of green.

Just a little green
like the color when the spring is born,
there'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow...
Joni Mitchell

Of all the sad songs Joni Mitchell ever wrote, Little Green is maybe the saddest. She wrote it after she gave her baby daughter up for adoption.

Ungrateful cats and shrimp

More shrimp, please

John was asking the other day if I'd seen "Vino" in the garden, and I said it had been many weeks. When we have that conversation, "Vino" usually shows up to prove we're wrong thinking he went to his reward. And like clockwork there he was at the kitchen door the next night when we sat down for supper. Was it the shrimp? He stayed long enough to beg one off my plate and then ran outside again like he hated us. Which he seems to, unless we're having something good for dinner.

We could see he was plump after a long winter of sleeping on some neighbor's furniture. It's been 10 years now since I "rescued" him from a wire cage at Keppler's feed store when I stopped to buy something or other for Sizzle. I have a soft spot for brown tabby kittens, but out of the whole batch he was the troublesome one they were eager to find a home for. I remember someone saying he had the potential for a useful life in a horse barn catching mice, but I didn't listen. Next time I'd take the sweet white kitten in the corner of the cage.

Back to dinner. Linguine with shrimp and garlic-wine sauce is so good. I like old-fashioned spaghetti too, the kind we all grew up with. John claims both are inferior pasta shapes, at least for red sauce. To each his own. But he doesn't have any trouble eating this dish.

Here's an easy recipe:

I usually buy shrimp frozen, so I dole out 16 or so for two servings. In about 3 tbs. of olive oil, sauté a couple cloves of chopped garlic for a few seconds. Add a big pinch of red pepper flakes. The add the shrimp to the hot pan and brown for about 3 minutes each side, or until done. Remove the shrimp and pour in about 1 cup of white wine. Boil and reduce by half. Put the shrimp back in with a grind of black pepper, dash of dried Italian seasoning and squeeze of lemon juice. Toss in about 8 oz. of cooked linguine pasta. Italian food purists would never use cheese to finish a seafood dish, but a handful of grated Parmesan at the end binds the sauce and makes it taste great.

"Vino" tested and approved.

A glamorous violinist and Mother Goose

Leila Josefowicz

Yesterday at the Symphony we heard a Rachmaninov's Symphony and Leila Josefowicz played Prokofiev's Violin Concerto. We saw her perform once before in Seattle, and John claims she was wearing exactly the same toga dress then. Well-- I wouldn't argue with John, since he has a steel trap memory at the Symphony. Plus we sit in the fourth row and have an especially good view of lady violin soloists.

The third work was Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. In 1908 Ravel composed this piano music for the young children of his good friends. Both kids played the piano, and although it was a nice gift the piece proved beyond their abilities. Never mind, other French children were able to play it later and Ravel soon transcribed it for full orchestra.

Ravel's inspiration for Mother Goose came from the children's stories written by Charles Perrault (1628-1793.) I always think of Grimm and Anderson's creepy fairy tales, but Perrault created the fairy tale genre when he rewrote folk legends in a book called Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, with the subtitle Mother Goose. It was immediately popular and stories like Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella suddenly became the inspiration for countless composers and writers. The key phase here is "stories with morals," because these are not the short sweet nursery rhymes we associate with later Mother Goose books.

The three stories Ravel used in the Mother Goose Suite were Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb and Beauty and the Beast. As I was browsing around the Internet last night, I ran across all sorts of vintage illustrations.

How about a dive-bombing Mother Goose
to scare your pants off?

A lovely Burne-Jones painting of Sleeping Beauty.

Here's the birth of Tom Thumb.
At least mom is happy...it was so easy!
(The fairies dropped him off.)

Later, the proud dad carries him around on his hat.

And a poignant Beauty and the Beast illustration
from an old fairytale book.

Spring chores

Yesterday we finally had a glorious sunny day in Seattle and I didn't waste time inside. I worked in the garden, scrubbed three slimy birdbaths and a fountain with Clorox and cleaned the gas grill (not too bad.) To celebrate we had a nice hunk of fresh Steel-head salmon for dinner:


It's early and chilly, but I planted my geraniums from Costco anyway. We shouldn't have more frost and at least they're out of a dark warehouse. At RiteAid yesterday I was happy to find those Wave Petunias that can turn a petunia hater into a petunia lover. Finally after all that cleaning and planting, I hosed the deck down and it was dry in minutes. It's amazing how intense the April sun is at our latitude-- when the clouds lift.
Look at all the green tulip buds, ready to burst open. The peonies are also beautiful from the moment the bright red leaves push out of the ground.
You have to marvel at such a vigorous plant that grows for decades in exactly the same spot. As I get older I have more appreciation for the saying: bloom where you are planted. In fact, peonies hate to be moved and will punish the gardener for many years by not blooming if their roots are disturbed. Within a few days, the red buds already look like a miniature forest:

And finally in May, the one week peony growers look forward to all year:

Switzerland

No, this just looks like Switzerland-- it's a picture of Mt. Si I took yesterday at the barn. A big, frozen rock looming over us. It was like riding in front of an open refrigerator door. But at least it was bright and mostly dry, so I took Spanky for a walk around the property after my lesson. It was wonderful. He was wonderful. Thanks again Dolly, for letting me ride your horse. I'll find a way to make it up to you-- how about a lifetime supply of homemade granola?

We heard on the news last night that it has rained (or snowed) for 36 days out of the past 40 in Seattle. And the temperature is still 10-15 degrees lower than normal. Finally, good news for today and today only:

Friday:

Mostly sunny. Highs in the 50s. Light wind becoming north 10 mph or less in the afternoon.

So it will be a garden work day. I don't know anyone who likes the big box home improvement stores, but there's a decent Lowe's out in Issaquah with a good nursery so I stopped on the way home and got carried away. Geraniums, fuchsias, and other little tender annual starts that don't like cold weather. It has to warm up sometime, doesn't it?

What is that?

When we meet friends for a dim sum lunch in the international district, there's usually some shopping at the Uwajimaya store ($15 minimum purchase) to get parking tickets validated. But last time we ate at a different restaurant and parked for free near the Viet-Wah Supermarket. It's like a budget Uwajimaya with medicinal Chinese herbs and housewares. Most people here think of Uwajimaya when they think of an Asian grocery store, but our savvy friends say it's for tourists and shoppers who don't know any better. Why pay premium prices for Asian staples? I read in the paper that Viet-Wah sells SIX TONS of rice a week in Seattle. And everything in the grocery section is cheaper than Uwajimaya. Although a walk down the condiment aisle is bewildering:

There's an American success story behind the store. A Vietnamese "boat person" of Chinese descent named Duc Tran immigrated to Seattle in 1988. He first stayed with a pastor's family where he learned to eat meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but what he really wanted was food from home. Starting out as a dishwasher, with hard work and business smarts he opened the first Viet-Wah store and eventually became the president of a 20 million dollar retail food business.

But to be perfectly honest, the first thing that hits you when those Viet-Wah doors snap open is the smell. Chinese grocery stores apparently smell like that everywhere. But what is it? A strikingly complex bad odor, dominated by old fish and produce with undertones of dust and container ship. But there's something else, something not quite identifiable. Could it be the durian fruit?
This fruit is so pungent it's been banned in many public places around the world. Don't try to take it on the train in Singapore or you might get caned by the transit police! I'll never know, but people say it tastes like a cross between chocolate and onion. The smell is compared to "a month of unwashed gym socks." There was a time when U.S. import laws didn't even allow the fruit in our country, so you had to travel to Canada if you had a taste for it. But Mr. Tran lobbied the government and won the right to import it into the U.S. It is now offered for sale at his grocery stores.

Here we are, clogging up the aisles for the serious shoppers. After much discussion, everyone bought tea. No one bought durian.
Plenty of unusual and pungent fish...not to mention live turtles, frogs and eels.

Also squirming little crabs-- definitely not Dungeness.
And a scary-looking Chinese herb section. As our friend Don Phu said: "You must know what you are doing."