April showers (& blooms)

The view from our upstairs window: a rainy day and a pear tree in full bloom.

Sometimes when I’m not sure what exactly to write about for the weekly newsletter (by our count, I’ve written over 500 newsletter!), I go for a stroll around the farm with a camera to see what stories arise in pictures.

This week is all about blooms. So many trees are in some stage of bloom, including (most notably here on the island) the cherries. The landscape is filled with white trees, including those wonderful annual surprises of blooming trees tucked into unexpected places along waterways and in hedges.

Cherry blossoms!

Pear blossoms!

The earliest of the apples are blooming!

Even the peas are getting in on the action …

But, it’s also April. That month associated with showers. And, I observed today that those same blooms just can’t shine their brightest when it is dark and gloomy out. April showers dampen April flowers? Maybe.

The rain this last week has certainly had a dampening effect on other parts of our household. Casey’s been a little under the weather, and the kids were pretty antsy by the end of the very wet weekend (just shy of 3″ over the weekend!). Normally they spend a good part of the day outside, at the very least running outside to release energy a few times a day. They’re great at doing this in all kinds of weather, but pouring rain felt like a barrier even to them.

It’s hard for all of us to not feel antsy for the coming turn in weather, when more days are dry and warm than not. It is coming very soon (May seems like the tipping point).

But I’m working hard to appreciate every day’s gift. And in the last week I’ve been especially grateful for our small cozy house and the shelter it gives us in all kinds of storms. I’ve also been grateful for the joy of indoor pursuits. Good books makes my mental gratitude list almost every evening. I’m in the midst of a great fun engrossing epic novel, which helps make up for the rainy weather outside. And, this weekend, amidst another very wet afternoon, Rusty sat down and for the first time really got sucked into a novel for a lengthy period of time and finished the last quarter of Redwall, a book he’d been working through since January.

The forecast is for more and more rain, so I’m sure good books will stay on my gratitude list for a while yet. But when I look out the window to the south, even in the gathering darkness, I can see the band of white in our neighbor’s cherry orchard, reminding me that summer is very much on its way, soon to bring all the sweetness of that season.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

  • Apples — The apples are beginning to bloom, and last year’s harvest is about done! This is the last week of apples until mid-summer … but the strawberries are blooming now too.
  • Cilantro
  • Radishes
  • Salad turnips
  • Seasonal salad mix — Almost entirely from greenhouses this week, featuring lots of tender greens.
  • Kale rapini
  • Cabbage rapini
  • Chard
  • Butternut squash
  • Marina di Chioggia
  • Sunchokes
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