April showers

 I expect the daffodils are liking this. The people not so much.

A couple of people have been wondering recently about online places for or by older women, where the news is not always front and center.

I like YouTube channels Sixty and Me, The Last Homely House, and Silver and Solo. They're calm, interesting and happy women, all very different, one in Switzerland, one in northern England, one in BC.

I do like media literacy, also funny younger women, so for that  there's Meredith Constant on YouTube and Tiktok, and I follow podcasts, such as Rachel Maddow, The Daily Fail, also hilarious self help, not the news, in How to be Fine.

There's also a lovely new YouTube channel by craftsman Anthony White, Ants Country Life, so peaceful watching a woodworker and craftsman rebuilding dry stone walls, and things like building sheds in his country location in Northumberland, UK. 

He also works on Kate's place, building a cabin in Last Homely Garden, another lovely channel, offshoot of the Last Homely House. There she works on all kinds of fiber crafts and quiet domestic occupations.

And there's always Atomic Shrimp, endlessly enterprising, making, gardening, experimenting, foraging, beach walking, cooking.

So there's some nice alternatives to gloom and doom and fear mongering. You're welcome!

White rabbits and swifts

 Happy April

As Chaucer more or less put it;

When that Aprille with his shoures sweet

The droghte of March hath perc'd to the root

As seen here today

Too warm to sleep, so up early, and embarking on breakfast of pita bread filled with havarti cheese and spinach.

I'm rereading Laurie Colwin

And since she's a bit more meat-heavy than I, scrolling by,  but she reminded me about making yogurt, which I used to do all the time. 

Nowadays when I think about it I usually don't have a starter in the house. But right now I have some great Misfits yogurt for starter, and she reminded me of the proportions of starter to milk. 

I also found a mason jar to use, so today I'm all set to make a batch and see how it goes. It will be a bit cheaper than buying but will, even better, save bringing in yet  another plastic container each week.

Yesterday's knitting group was a small one, and our leader brought this in for me to use

 It's a swift, a piece of knitting equipment which helps you turn skeins of yarn into balls of yarn, like this

It beats using a chair back, if you don't have a handy relative to hold the yarn while you wind it. And, as you see, I was down near the end of the current ball.

We were discussing brain fog, mine, and how viruses can cause it, also Lyme disease and other infections. 

Ed note: I edited here to make it clear that Lyme is not a virus. Living almost at ground zero for it, I could hardly fail to know that, but blogista Cathy pointed out my wording wasn't clear. I was just generalizing about ailments that can cause brain fog. Thank you Cathy, and back to the narrative..

 One of the group said well, it took me a year to really recover from the aftereffects of Lyme disease.  And some people, she added darkly, never recover from brain fog. A bit discouraging! She's not known for her tact..

Last evening I made vegetable stock

Which included the peel from a recent batch of ginger, very interesting smells in the house. Later today I'll use it for barley and sausage soup. Stormy weather forecast, so a big pot of soup will be handy.

Happy day everyone, I expect you all played nicely together to solve the word puzzle: 

ORCHESTRA!

Enjoy your day, my usual daily text to Handsome Son.

Spring on the patio

Today is all slashing winds and rain and excited texts from the power company, so it's a good thing I did these pictures yesterday.

A guided tour of the approx 20'x10' patio. Don't laugh-- you could fit an entire New York apartment on it--yesterday.

But first, it being Easter and I'd baked bread, whole-wheat, AP, oats and caraway seeds, I did a couple of deliveries.

Friends next door and across the street got a little care package of sliced bread, warm from the oven, for their toasting pleasure. Excited texts ensued. Just enough for each couple's breakfast.

Then, Easter Bunny work done, I wandered about outside to see spring springing.

Above are the remains of the cherry bush blossoms, where there's going to be edible fruit for me, if the birds and squirrels don't get there first. This cherry bush variety hides the fruit near the branch, under the foliage, so you have to see it from underneath.

 The little Japanese maple, whose foliage is a great dye material later on, is opening

 Lemon balm everywhere. You can use it in drinks, or for flavor in, say, lemon chicken

The chives are recovering fast from the recent wild pruning when I needed them to make chivyssoise

The honesty plant coming through again in the strawberry pot. Since I planted it in this pot, pretty high up, I've managed to keep it safe from chipmunks.

 They used to reach up and bite right through the stems about six inches from the ground, just as they were setting seed, the reason I grew them. They can't reach this high and don't seem to be climbers.

I'm growing them for the lovely silver coin- like seed cases, as dried flowers. Each year I can add a little harvest to the current collection.

So there's spring, the true story of central NJ, brought to you by the observer at Field and Fen. We're not called F and F for nothing!