Seeking Marital Bliss

It's a good thing Ed and I get along, or this 130+ days of sheltering in place would get even older than it is getting. We rarely quarrel, but I must confess that there is one thing that we can't seem to agree on. And it's causing angst in our marriage.



The problem is: I love a good fruit crisp. One with lots of fruit and a fairly thick layer of crunchy oats, brown sugar, and almonds, bound together with some butter. One like the one found on page 689 of Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I love to make crisps with the gallons and gallons of wild blackberries that we pick each July. And every time I make one and bring it to the table. Ed says: "This is good, but some people prefer a cobbler." He is one of them; I am not.

What was wrong with him? I continued to make crisps. 

But then I started to wonder if perhaps he was right and that maybe I could learn to love a good cobbler. Was I just being stubborn? So I turned to page 691 of the above-mentioned cookbook and made a cobbler. Ed was thrilled; me less so. I just don't like the cakey topping.

I then conducted a survey. I asked Jack which he preferred, secretly trying to line the kids up on my side. Without hesitation, he said, "I prefer a pie."

And that got me to thinking. Perhaps the solution for our impasse was to find a solution we could both agree on. So, today I made a clafoutis, a 19th-century french dessert that traditionally uses black cherries. My version featured Farm Dover wild blackberries nestled in a thick flan-like batter. (Technically, when other kinds of fruit are used instead of cherries, the dish is properly call a flaugnarde.) It was super simple to make.

I'm planning to serve it tonight, but snuck a bite out of the skillet while it was still warm. Not as good, in my opinion as a crisp, but much better than a cobbler. I think it might work for us and allow us to get back to our normal state of marital bliss.

If not, I could always try a Brown Betty, a buckle, a grunt, hand pie, slump or pandowdy.  I'm willing to work on saving our marriage thru baking and Ed says he is willing to give it a go as well. Wish us luck.

____________________

Farm Dover Blackberry Clafoutis
(loosely based on recipe by David Lebovitz)

ingredients

Enough blackberries (or other berries) to cover the bottom of a 11-inch cast iron skillet or other similar sized shallow baking dish
3 large eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/3 cup whole milk
Soften butter, for preparing the baking dish

procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Smear a 2-quart shallow baking dish or cast-iron skillet liberally with butter. 

2. Lay blackberries in a single layer in the baking dish.

3. Using an immersion blender, mix the eggs, flour, vanilla and almond extracts, 1/2 cup sugar and milk together until smooth.

4. Pour the batter over the blackberries and sprinkle fruit and batter with 3 tablespoons of sugar.

5. Bake the clafoutis until the custard is just set; a knife polked in the center should emerge relatively clean. It will take about 45 minutes. 

Celebrate, when the time feels right

I never liked celebrating my birthday. It wasn't that I minded turning a year older. It wasn't that I don't like to be showered with attention and thoughtful gifts. It wasn't even that I don't like cake. It was none of that.

Rather, it was the timing. You see, I was born on January 19th and the very thought of celebrating so soon after the holidays just made me crazy. All I wanted to do in mid-January was hibernate.

And it wasn't just me. No one in my family or dear friends really wanted to figure out another gift or eat more celebratory food. All they wanted to do was hibernate.

A couple of years ago, I was grumbling about this unfortunate birthday business and curmudgeonly joked to Ed that I thought I should just change my birthday to July 19th. Then, I thought no more about it.

Fast forward to that July 19th, a Thursday. Like every Thursday two years ago, we drove to Louisville for Ed to check in at work and go to Rotary and for me to visit with my Dad and run in-town errands. Ed suggested we stay in town for an early dinner. As we pulled up to Holy Grale, Maggie appeared from around the corner, with gift in hand. And Ed magically pulled out a present from the back seat. They had colluded to celebrate my birth that night. A tradition was born, a wonderful, embraceable tradition.

This year, my week of celebration began on Thursday, with an alfresco lunch with girlfriends, continued on Sunday with dinner with Maggie and family and calls from Mary and Jack, and culminated today with a very early morning outing to Bernheim Forest for a hike to experience "Forest Giants in a Giant Forest," an art installation by Danish artist Thomas Dambo. The installation is comprised of three large structures placed throughout the arboretum built using recycled wood from the region.  I can't tell you how cool (and gigantic!) they are. They won't be there forever. So, get yourself down to Clemont, Ky. and see for yourself.

Mama Loumari

Little Nis

Little Elina

Sunrise over the Big Prairie at Bernheim

My favorite forest giant

Friends, willing to celebrate my birthday on the date of my choosing

Help from Hazel; wild blackberry pie by Maggie

So, thank you to all who made my birthday so happy. I am truly grateful.

When time is on your side

More than 100 days into the Time of Corona, we are still hunkered down. Yes, we venture out, but only occasionally. When we are away from Farm Dover, we find ourselves anxious to get back home – back to where we feel safe. Fortunately, I like it here.

Other than a handful of takeout lunches, our meals are created from whatever we have on hand or can harvest from the garden or forage from the woods and fields. Since I'm not cooking for a crowd, our meals tend to be quite simple. Sometimes only anchovy butter on sour dough toast, or carrots roasted and served with a carrot-top pesto, an Ottolenghi omelette, or asparagus from our patch cooked every which way I can think of. 

Most nights I wander into the kitchen while Ed watches the local news. If I don't have a pre-conceived notion of what I want to fix for dinner, I putter around until I come up with a plan. Rarely do I spend more than an hour cooking dinner; most nights, half that amount. It's time I enjoy, creative and stress-free for me.

One of the many strange outcomes of this strange time is that my notion of cooking has shifted ever so slightly. Because I'm home all day, it seems I'm more willing to invest in dishes that require time, in some cases, lots of time. But they don't necessarily require my constant attention; they mostly transform into something delicious on their own over a matter of hours, or even days. Call it kitchen alchemy, a seemingly magical process.

Let me give you some examples. Three come from a blog post: The 20 Greatest Recipes of All Time. Granted this was just one person's opinion, but the list intrigued me. I had already made a handful of Ms. Rosenstrach's nominations and I agreed that they were awfully good. I chose three new ones to try – each requiring a significant commitment of time. I was curious to see if it was worth it. And, as you know, I had lots of time on my side.

The first was Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce, reprinted in the New York Times, which notes a total time requirement of four hours. But then I read through all the reader comments and discovered that the real magic happens sometime between hours 5 and 6, when the classic meat sauce turns sublime. All the recipe requires of me is to let it cook at "the laziest of simmers" and to give it a stir every hour or so. I almost never follow a recipe exactly, but both times I've made this, I have followed it to a T and can't think of how I might alter it. It is perfect, as is.

The second was David Chang's Bo Ssam, a dish from his famous New York restaurant: Momofuku. It's a slow-cooked pork shoulder with an insane caramelized crust, served in lettuce wraps with Korean-inspired condiments. I know, sounds weird. The recipe calls for marinating the pork for six hours in a sugar/salt brine and then cooking it for six hours. I did not follow the recipe exactly as I did not have any fresh oysters or cabbage kimchi. I did made some pickled radishes to go along with the sweet chili sauce and ginger scallion sauce and I did serve it in lettuce wraps. Maggie, Nate and Hazel were out visiting and I served it for dinner. It was a hit! Delicious and fun to eat. I placed the pork in the middle of the table on a giant cutting board and we each customized our wraps. Next time, I think I could cook the pork roast in a crock pot for the first six hours and finish it in a 500-degree oven for the last 10 minutes to get a crisp, sweet crust. I only made this once, but it will be on repeat whenever we can host dinners again.

The third entrée was a classic Japanese fish preparation made famous by the chef Nobu Matsuhisa. The recipe calls for soaking a black cod filet for three days in a four-ingredient miso marinade. It does require some specialty Japanese ingredients, which Maggie fortunately had in her pantry: sake, mirin, and white miso paste. But, it only takes 10 minutes to cook. I used sea bass instead of black cod, but any high-fat fish would work. I served it with some bok choy and rice. So simple. Foolproof and very impressive.

There are some other recipes that I have made in the past 100+ days that also require some time commitments. In particular, this Shockingly Easy Foccccia and this Homemade Naan were ones I'll make again and again.

I had always shied away from recipes that required marinating, yeast, or long stove-top cooking times, but, if anything, this time at home has taught me that sometimes really good things come to those who wait and, with a little kitchen alchemy – and plenty of time – seemingly magical things can happen.

Dad Hugs

We need four hugs a day for survival. 

We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. 

We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

-- Virginia Satir, family therapist 

On March 9, I went to visit with my Dad who lives in a memory care community at The Legacy at English Station. While he doesn't remember much these days, he always knows when one of his four girls come to visit and is always happy to see us. That Monday morning I found him at breakfast and afterwards we marched around the courtyard, while he called out "hup, two, three, four" in military cadence.  He then gave me an Army salute in front of the flag pole.

I didn't stay long, promising to come see him as soon as I got back from our trip to Mexico.

My Dad, on March 9, 2020

Two days later, the facility was closed to all visitors, rightfully to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We talked on the phone and even Facetimed once or twice, but I knew Dad was missing the hugs he so liked to give and so needed to receive.

Fast forward 98 days. On Monday, June 15, I went to visit my Dad and give him a hug. Granted, it was through a modified clear plastic shower curtain. The Legacy had set up a hugging station and was scheduling hugging sessions. I met sisters Sherry and Julie there. We signed in; filled out short medical questionnaires; had our temperatures taken and then were escorted back to the corner of the common room where we found our Dad, patiently waiting for his hugs.

One by one, we slipped our arms into plastic sleeves and then wrapped our arms around Dad, giving -- and receiving -- great big bear hugs.

Was it as good as a skin-to-skin hug? No, but it was enough.

There is a balm

I keep thinking I should tackle a blog about this time of the coronavirus, these weeks of sheltering in place. How will I remember it? And what effect will it have on my family and me in the weeks, months and years to come? How will the world change because of it? I find it nearly impossible to capture this era in words, mostly because my reaction to it changes from morning to bedtime, from bedtime to morning; a loop of uncertainty and fear followed by hope and charity. But here's my attempt...

I am keenly aware that my circumstances are about as good as they can possible be. Ed and I are healthy. We are not out of a job. We have 38 acres to wander around and tend to, with food from our garden and edible plants along our wooded paths. We have each other.

I do worry a bit about the kids – Mary, Brian and Saltie (their dog) in Brooklyn and Jack and Kasia in Berlin, even Maggie, Nate and Hazel just across the state line in New Albany. But I know that they are as good as they can be, each resilient in face of adversity, creative in resources, and hunkered down with those they love. They worry about us too, calling far more often than usual, just to check in on their elderly parents.

I worry about my 89-year-old dad, obliviously going about his life in a memory-care facility, wondering why his four daughters don't come visit, but otherwise seeming in good spirits. I know he misses our hugs.

I worry that Hazel will forget how much I love her and how much we adore her visits to Farm Dover. Already she gets frustrated when she has had enough of FaceTiming, putting up her little hand over the camera and demanding No No! when she wants her mamma's full attention. I don't take it personally, but lament the time we are apart.

Having said all this, I also can say with certainty that I have loved being at home for days and days on end. Ed and I never were much on leaving the farm for social eventing, so being here is easy. It is comforting and safe.

All things considered, the timing was good for us. We had just gotten home from a week in Mexico and the farm was beginning its springtime revival. Before this intense time of watching the day-to-day changes in our landscape, I would have thought about the passage of a year on this place in terms of the four seasons. Now, I've come to realize that we have 52 micro-seasons, each week bringing change to flora and fauna.

And we've been here to witness it. Every day we've spent hours  outside – working in the gardens, combing through the woods in search of invasive plants, mulching the tiny trees, walking out to get the mail. We've seen the first of the daffodils bloom in late February, the middle ones in March and the very last ones in April, all offering up their sunny faces for our delight. Then, one by one, we've watched their blooms fade.

We've seen the pussy willow and viburnum bloom, followed by the magnolia, the service berry, wild cherry, crabapple, peach and apple trees. We peer down at the mayapples unfurling their umbrella leaves and discover morel mushrooms pushing up from leaf debris on the forest floor.

We've watched as the bluebirds and tree swallows have taken up residence in our bird boxes and the red-wing blackbirds, robins and brown thrashers have built exquisite nests and hatched their chicks. Nearly everyday we spy the dreamsicle-colored orioles feeding from the hickory blossoms. They even showed up on our back porch earlier this week.

In our big garden, I've planted fava beans, peas, onions, beets, chard and shallots. This week, I'll add pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers and tomatoes to the mix. In my herb garden, the mint and lemon balm, the lavender and the sage, the rue and tarragon are all spreading tuffs of green. The bees have found the nectar in the bee garden, drinking freely from the blue blossoms of wild indigo and eastern bluestar.

Because we were here and paying attention, we saw the praying mantis cases release hundreds of baby mantises. Seems like every time I'm out and about, I see an interesting bug to photograph to send to Hazel (as part of my ongoing mission to help her love bugs).

While new life bursts forth on every square inch of Farm Dover, heartache comes with it. Just outside our study window, robin eggs are smashed in their nest by an unknown predator, hungry rabbits chew down to the quick the coreopsis in the back garden, kale plants are uprooted and absconded in the big garden, and cruelest of all, a May freeze turns the buds crisp and black on the big-leaf and cucumber magnolias, hickory trees, sassafras and tulip trees -- and most tragically, the pawpaw flowers.

When I am saddened by the current state of the world, I go for a ramble along our patchwork of paths. Walking these green pathways is my balm; it heals my soul and replaces my despair with hope. Paying attention to the miraculous unfolding of the seasons, cures my wounded soul.

When the children were young, we rotated who said the blessing before dinner. Mary, our youngest and fiercest, would always include a blessing for "anyone sick or not well." Jack would challenge the sense of that category, arguing that it was redundant. Mary would adamantly explain that it was possible to be unwell, even if you were not sick. That's how I think about these days. I ask blessings on all who are sick or not well. May we all be healed.

We are only visitors

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. 

But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship
from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer

Fifty years ago tomorrow marks the first Earth Day. It was organized as a teach-in on college campuses by Gaylord Nelson, a junior senator from Wisconsin, who had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. Today, it is the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people committing to a day of action to change human behavior and create policy changes. Well, at least that was the case before a pandemic swept over the earth...

Since we are sheltering in place, I will spend Earth Day 2020 much as I've spent every day of the last six weeks. I'll rise and go for a walk along the paths. I may collect some edibles along the way. I'll probably toil in the garden until Ed finds me to go out into the fields and woods, hunting down and destroying invasive plants. Later, we might stop at some of the 1000+ trees that we've planted to clear the weeds from their bases, fertilize and mulch them. We might divide some perennials in the Bee Garden, or add a new layer of wood chips to tamp down the weeds. The grass needs mowing and the fences need weed whipping. The list, as always, is unending.

Ed and I have been grateful to have this work this spring. Our days pass quickly; we fall into bed well before 10 p.m. with a duel sense of achievement and exhaustion.

We are the caretakers of this patch of land; we understand that we do not own it. Sure, we possess a legal piece of paper that says it is ours, but we know...we are only visitors.

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

RIP, John

We've been fans of John Prine for a long, long time and were saddened to learn that he died last night from complications of the coronavirus. In his memory, I'm republishing a blog that I wrote 10 years ago when we were just dreaming of moving to the country. RIP, John. 

Eat a Lot of Peaches

At the Palace Theatre on Friday night folk singer/songwriter John Prine put into song a description of what I hope our life on the farm will be like. In his Spanish Pipedream, he sang:

Blow up your TV,
Throw away your paper,
Go to the country,
Build you a home,
Plant a little garden,
Eat a lot of peaches,
Try an find Jesus on your own

The song goes on to talk about a topless dancer doing the hoochy-coo, which sounds kinda kinky.  And I'm also not sure Ed would be willing to blow up our TV as he is quite fond of Jeopardy, college football, golf and Modern Family. But I really like the part about planting a little garden and eating a lot of peaches.

John Prine in concert on Friday night

John Prine also sang about the glory of true love, which seemed especially poignant to me as Ed and I celebrated our 25th anniversary earlier in the week.

Oh the glory of true love
Is a wild and precious thing
It don’t grow on old magnolias
Or only blossom in the spring
No the glory of true love
Is it will last your whole life through
Never will go out of fashion
Always will look good on you

You can climb the highest mountain
Touch the moon and stars above
But Old Faithful’s just a fountain
Compared to the glory of true love

So here's to my true love. May we move to the country. Plant a little garden and eat a lot of peaches. Check out that hoochy-coo thing. And, who knows, maybe even find Jesus on our own...

Home, thankfully

Until a week ago, Ed and I were in sunny Mexico, fairly oblivious to the fright and panic that our friends and family were experiencing on a minute-by-minute basis. Yes, we knew that a virus was coming to the US – but it was not being reported as dire before we left.  We were largely insulated from the stress by 1) our desire to live a week without news coming at us from every direction (combined with our lack of understanding Mexican-language, thereby never turning on the TV news)  and 2) the Mexican government's resistance to acknowledging the possibility that the coronavirus may have been alive and spreading even as its people continued to gather in large groups.

We flew home last Wednesday on nearly empty planes and I admit that I was relieved to be safely back home. I am grateful for our life here on Farm Dover and happy to wander our ever-greening paths, weed and mulch the gardens, forage from the woods and meadows, and plan and plant vegetables to feed us in the coming months. If only I could gather my dearest friends and family around, I would be content.

I know for others, life is a lot more complicated. It is scary for many and the future uncertain for all.

It seems a bit inappropriate to put up a bunch of photos from our trip when folks have other things – more important things – weighing on their hearts and minds. Because I don't want to forget the highlights, I've added a section to this post I wrote about our first trip to Mexico in 2018. I'll save the other pics for a happier time.

Like kidney stones, this too shall pass. In the meantime, I hope you and your beloveds stay healthy.

Comings and Goings: Brooklyn

You should know that I mostly blog for myself. Yes, I'm glad that you are here – showing interest in our comings and goings from Farm Dover – but if I don't write about our travels, I have only the vaguest recollections, forgetting many of the details.

We are just back from a winter weekend getaway to visit Mary, Brian and Saltie in Brooklyn. It's a rainy Monday; no going out to poke around to see what might be coming up in the garden, so I thought I would spend a few minutes recording the details of our trip.

View for Mary's and Brian's loft in Red Hook

First of all, it was great. Mary and Brian are such gracious hosts, always planning our days and nights full of fun, paced perfectly. This trip was no exception.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon, checking into a charming Airbnb in South Slope, not terribly far from Mary's and Brian's Red Hook loft. We met up for a beer at Sunny's Bar, a Red Hook institution, that was remarkably quiet on an early Thursday evening. Ed had recently read Sunny's Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the edge of the World, a book given to him by Mary, and described as "an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world – and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it." (It's also the setting for a movie that we recently watched: Hearts Beat Loud, starring Nick Offerman.)

From there, we walked over to Fort Defiance for dinner, a Red Hook neighborhood restaurant where we had dined previously for brunch. It's eclectic and delicious.

Brian had a business appointment on Friday morning up north of the city, so Mary met us at Four and Twenty Blackbirds for coffee and a scone before boarding the R train for the Lower East Side and a long browse through the Strand Book Store and its "18 miles of books." Then, with a bag full of books, it was on to Katz's Delicatessen, the no-frills deli with theatrically cranky service serving mile-high sandwiches. Pastrami on rye, with a side of slaw and pickles. And don't dare lose your yellow ticket or they won't let you leave (not sure what they would actually do to you, but I don't want to find out)!

We needed to walk off our lunch so we headed to The New Museum of Contemporary Art for a look at four floors of some pretty spectacular paintings (especially those by Jordan Casteel). A final stop for the afternoon took us to the Despana wine shop, where Ed acquired a bottle of orujo, a brandy from northern Spain.

After a nap back at our place, we met Mary, Brian and their friends: Alena and Matt and their one-month-old baby at Folksbier Brauerei, a small Carroll Garden's brewery. We oohed and aahed over Baby Dom while she slept soundly against her dad's chest snug in her carrier.

Dinner that night was just down the street at Frankies 457 Spuntino, a neighborhood Italian restaurant. One of the things I love most about dining with our kids is turning the ordering over to them. I've trained them well. We had a lovely dinner, ordered by Mary and Brian. This is the second time we have dined at Frankies and I'd be happy to come back any time we are in Brooklyn.

We spent Saturday morning at Mary's and Brian's loft, having pour-over coffee and sweets from Baked and watching Saltie lie on her bed or stretch on the floor.

For lunch, we headed to the East Wind Snack Shop for some amazing handcrafted Chinese dumplings. What a find. I could lunch here every day! The sun was out, but the wind was cold; nevertheless, we took a walk through nearby Propect Park after lunch. From there, we headed to Queens to take in the Museum of Moving Images (film, television, and digital media). My favorite exhibit was the Jim Hanson exhibit, where I got to see all my Sesame Street friends.

Meanwhile, Ed got to catch up with Howdy Doody, a childhood favorite of his. He has this exact same doll packed away in the basement. I may need to go dig it out.

Pizza was the nomination for dinner on Saturday night; we walked over to Pizza Moto and scored a table in the kitchen (marketed to us as a chef's table). It worked out great. We watched as five guys made dozens of thin-crusted Neapolitan pies, while eating three of our own.

Sunday morning we were up and out, meeting Mary for a chai and scone before church at First Presbyterian Brooklyn. Attending church at this welcoming sanctuary is always a highlight of our Brooklyn visits. The music alone is worth the visit (but the sermon is also always inspiring).

We brunched at Colonie NYC, sharing a pot of french press coffee and warm donuts served with lemon cream before ordering our entrees.

Just in case we got hungry on the flight home, Brian drove us to Court Street Grocers to pick up a sandwich to go, and then we headed to the airport. Time to head home.

Thank you Mary. Thank you Brian. It was great.

More plants, please

Some people think that a girl cannot have too many shoes. I personally think that a girl cannot have too many plants. While I've purchased my fair share of plants, I'm now learning how to propagate them; you know, turning one plant into two or twenty-two. I haven't tackled layering, budding or grafting, but I have taken a stab at cuttings, root division, tuber separations and bulb cloning. Here's a look at my efforts at plant multiplication.

Propagation by cuttings
First there was one. It belonged to Mary and when she left for New York City, she asked me to take care of it; it being a fiddleleaf fig houseplant. I told her I wouldn't make any promises for its long-term health, but I'd try my best to keep it alive.

I liked it, and it liked me -- or maybe it just liked being where it could soak up the light from the front windows of our study. In the beginning, it was only about a foot tall. But inch by inch, leaf by leaf, it grew and grew, shooting up toward the 16-foot ceiling.

At one point it got so tall that it started bending over. So, I took a deep breath and cut about three feet off the main trunk, cutting just above a leaf node. Because the leaves were so large and beautiful, I plopped the cutting into a water-filled glass vase, and basically forgot about it for a month or so.

Two things happened. One: the main stem of the original plant branched where I cut it, changing the shape of the tree (for the better).

Two: when I pulled the cutting out of the vase, the bottom had roots! I stuck it in a pot filled with potting soil. It grew. So now I had two beautiful and healthy plants. We took the baby one to Brooklyn when we drove up to see Mary and Brian. It is thriving in their Red Hook loft apartment, sprouting its way up to their 30-foot ceiling.

Since then I have repeated the process and now two plant babies live at Maggie's and Nate's house while two reside on either side of our fireplace.

This past weekend, I took cuttings from the original plant and from the ones in our living room. So, the original plant has now turned into 10 plants, two of which are second generation. Let me know if you want to adopt one.

_________

Propagation by root division
While Jack was visiting last week, he helped me move the Lenten roses that I had tucked too far back under the hydrangeas that line both sides of the cottage. He dug; I pulled. Then we divided the plants, replanting some near the front of the row of hydrangeas, some under the tulip tree in the front bee garden, and some in the side birdhouse garden. From four, we ended up with eight.

__________

Propagation by tuber division
Waiting patiently in my basement is a box of dahlia tubers, lifted from the garden after the first frost and stored in peat. This spring, I'll divide the clumps of tubers, making sure each division has at least one strong, healthy dormant bud (eye). From the 10 or so clumps, (fingers crossed) I'll be able to plant about 40 tubers, which should produce about 4000 dahlias. That's a lot of flowers!

___________

Propagation by asexual bulb cloning
In between rain showers this morning, Ed and I headed out to the back field where I had spied some clumps of daffodils that we had planted when we first moved to Farm Dover a decade ago. Since then, we have let the field grow up into native grasses and wildflowers. The original daffodils were lost among the growth. We dug up the clumps –– noting that there were many more bulbs than what we had originally planted –– and replanted them down by the creek path where they can show off their spring blooms.

__________

Propagation by seed
Last month I ordered a number of flower seed packets from Floret Farm, including celosia, cosmos, amaranth, quinoa, strawflowers, yarrow and zinnia. I've been dreaming of how to expand my cutting garden and will strike out this spring with hoe in hand to plant these seeds and then sit back and wait (or weed like crazy) until they are ready to harvest.

I still know so little about propagating plants, but I'm having fun learning. Between Google and experimentation, I'm making progress toward making more plants. Just as Ed calls my foraging for edibles free food, I think of propagation as free plants. And a girl (farm-her) can never have too many plants!