Breakfast of Champions

Not to sound like an Alice Waters clone, but my breakfast these past few days has been local farm eggs (1 yolk, 2 whites, extra yolk makes dog very happy — it’s good to share), scrambled with some arugula out of my garden and eaten over toast with a little goat cheese crumbled on top. It’s so good that yesterday, when I was out of eggs, I found myself cranky that the local natural foods store (which always makes me grumpy because they seem way more concerned with supplements than with food — eat real food people!) was still closed, as was Matt’s Meats where they also carry local eggs. So I had to settle for diner breakfast at Martins, which was fine, it’s always the same, which is what one wants from a diner. But this morning, there are eggs, there is arugula straight from the garden, there’s a happy dog who liked his extra yolk, and glory be, there’s even a nice steady rain falling on my garden.

Vacation in the backyard was a spectacular success. My yard is really coming together … I mowed and weed-whacked the other day, and despite never having been a lawn person, I was quite pleased with how nice it looked. Although I’m sure lawn-purists would criticise the diversity of plant life that makes up said lawn — no weed and feed for me. If it’s green, and mostly grass, I’m happy. In fact, this fall I’m going to seed with Nichols Garden Nursery’s Dryland Ecology Lawn Mix which contains a mix of grasses, clovers and some tiny wildflowers like chamomile. I like a mix in a lawn, and anything that will allow me to mow less often is a good thing.

Eventually I’d like to get rid of much of the lawn and replace it with perennial beds. Now that the fence is up, I have a long bed to work with, a bed that unfortunately, thanks to the happy workers’ feet is sort of a tabula rasa, but six feet by thirty is a fun space to think about. I’m hoping the big scarlet poppies and the iris will recover, but if not, well, I’ll just plant some other fun stuff. And for the back corner, where the sacred rhubarb grows, I’m thinking about raspberry canes, and asparagus — things I’ve been wanting to grow but which I don’t have room for in the regular garden.

But for now, it’s back to the day job, back to trying to make progress on the new book, back to watching, miracle of miracles, things grow in my vegetable garden (gardening is good for those of us whose faith in things working out okay wavers … you put in those seeds, nothing happens, nothing happens, and then there are sprouts, sprouts that grow into real things. Amazing.)