Is it really Friday again? I've been up to my ears in work and trying to get on top of things before we leave for our trip to Venice. We're going for the black-tie 50th birthday celebration of a dear friend, and have rented a charming little garden apartment in Dorsoduro for the first week of May. To say I'm looking forward to the time away would be the understatement of the century. But I'm also praying for rain at home (it's been bone-dry here) and hotly anticipating a summer of gardening and foraging (more on the latter next week), both of which are off to a pretty good start. I want to share with you a few of the early beauties that announce spring, as well as a bunch of links I've been saving up for things to eat, do, ponder and buy.
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A-foraging I went and I didn't find one thing I was hoping for. No morels, no edible fiddleheads, not a single solitary ramp. And yet, it was truly a glorious day. The mighty Delaware, full of silt stirred up by the recent rains, is flowing the color of milky coffee. Eighty degrees out, with gentle breezes, fluffy cumulus clouds like globs of marshmallow cream in a Tiffany blue sky. The kind of weather sure to rouse even the drowsiest bear and summon the rattlesnakes from their stony bowers. I confess, I devoted a fair amount of mental energy conjuring up scenarios in which I was lunch. A trio of turkey vultures circling overhead didn't help matters much. But in the end, I was sufficiently distracted by all the green living things teeming on the forest floor.
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