Quiet Clouds

 

                It has been grey and misty weekend—low clouds, occasional rains, sweatshirt and wool hat weather. We have months of this in the Willamette Valley, from November until late May most years, and it feels comforting to walk downtown on Saturday morning in the light mist. Very few people are out; the charms of an extra hot beverage and wooly socks is strong in the small bungalows I pass on my way to the river.  I am on a mission to consider a Depression Glass pitcher I saw in a window last week, otherwise, I, too, would be at home with a book.

                There is not much to do in the gardens this month. I finished pruning a couple of weeks ago. We have planted two fruit trees to replace the ones that reached their end of life two years ago, adding to our little orchard. Last weekend, we bought the wood to repair some garden beds that were rotting and Mark has been working on that after work and on Sunday morning. We moved the coop over a bed. I cleaned out the greenhouse and prepped some planters and washed some signs for repainting. There are some early greens sitting in six-packs on a heating mat, just putting out their first true leaves, but we are in early growing days. The light is too muted by clouds to bring life out of the ground.

    

            Inside, we engage in cozy winter projects. I found one book on knitting gnomes and am working on one with a purple hat and multi colored shawl and another book on British food, which led to a loaf of Bara Brith tea bread. Mark and I rescued a batch of sauerkraut that I had made a month ago—I had miscalculated the amount of salt, basing it on pounds, not kilograms. Too Salty!  I bought a second red cabbage and we chopped it up and mixed it in with the first batch, added more garlic and red pepper but no more salt, and kept it on the top of the fridge for a week or so. It worked! We had kraut melts for lunch (new whole whet sourdough bread, a mound of red cabbage kraut, and chedder cheese melted over all) when we came in from yard work.  We now have A Lot of sauerkraut if anyone wants to try the sandwich.  We watched All Creatures Great and Small last night and remembered walking over the Dales years ago.  

                The larger world swirls around us in news and chaos. On Friday nights I turn off the computer and we take a short break from the fray. We will be back—I have a council packet on the couch beside me—but this weekend, we gave into the lure of quiet clouds.