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| Visitors from afar - Paul, Carolyn, and Thomas |
I have had the loveliest
Triduum and Easter in years!
My friend Carolyn stayed with me so
that she didn’t have to commute to all the zillion services at which our choir
sang.
I’m sure that the fun of her
company was part of the wonderfulness. And on Good Friday,
adorable Paul, who came all the way from
Germany for the St. James Holy Week services, and brought his equally adorable
friend Thomas, visited us for breakfast.
That was part of it too. I did so enjoy their company.
The Easter Vigil service is one of the most beautiful events
of the year. We had to be there at six-thirty to rehearse and then finally
dragged ourselves home at nearly midnight, but the time flew by amazingly
with the lighting of the Easter fire, the readings and chants - so ancient, yet always so
new, the thrill of the neophytes in their new white garments. Everything glittering and golden. It’s all so exciting! And when it was over and we got home,
Carolyn and I immediately gobbled up the Cadbury’s Eggs which I had been saving
and dreaming about increasingly for the last few weeks of Lent.
This year I was completely successful in my Lenten promises, one of
which was giving up candy. This
seems like such a juvenile thing to give up, doesn’t it? I have been giving up
candy since about the age eight. Usually
I have the occasional slip-up, but this time I conquered. I have to admit that there were a
couple of close calls. Once, when
we were grocery shopping, I bought Rebecca and I each a chocolate bar, and
after paying for them, remembered my Lenten vow. Rebecca was happy to take care of the matter for me
and to remove temptation by eating both of them.
I had planned to do nothing at all today except lie about and
recover, but Becca invited me to come along with her on a nettle picking
expedition.
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| Stalking the wild skunk cabbage. They are getting bigger. |
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| The Nettle Patch |
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| The Pooped Pup |
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| The nettle preparation |
The nettles are for
soup, and great care is required in their preparation. I forgot to bring gloves, and so just
observed the actual picking. I had
a very unfortunate experience with nettles years ago on the Hill of Tara. I won’t tell
you where the ugly particulars, but I will say that it was pretty terrible. Nettles can be dreadful things. But tasty, Rebecca assures me. Margaret wanted to come, and declared that
she was up to the walk, but changed her mind early on. She explained that she wasn’t tired,
but all this talk of thistles made her nervous and so she needed a ride up the
hill, lest she touch a nettle with her paw or worse yet, her nose. I suspected that the thistle-fear was a
fraud and a poor pretext in order to get a lift.
For yet further recovery, we worked on our current knitalong - a pair of mittens which we both thought would be easy, but are not. They require a bit of speculation about the meaning of the directions, and considerable attention. Somehow, doing this together makes it easier and more fun.
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| The Knitalong Mitti |
7 comments:
So,... how did the thistle soup turn out? Artichokes are thistles, so it should be good.
Julie in San Diego
Actually, I meant nettles! I just changed the thistles to nettles. I bet thistle soup would be good and everything Becca cooks is good, but I didn't get to have any. She is making it to take to work today.
We did have fun! I will make a post about my nettle soup later, after I've made it.
Agh, NETTLES! They used to grow about 3 feet tall in our unweeded garden when I was a child. Nettle stings were best dealt with by the application of the biggest dock leaves we could find which, providentially, always grow close to a nettle patch - nature's antidote. I haven't seen a nettle since moving to the U.S. in 1986, well except for return trips to England of course. I wish my mother had had a recipe for nettle soup but on the rare occasions when my father did pull them up they were merely consigned to the compost heap.
We have nettles in our side yard. We used to rub our stings with the back of sword ferns.
.I'll keep repeating my name for Schola until you give me a "LIKE" as I am needy.
"The Sisterhood of the traveling chants."
Cute pictures of Becca!
Catching up on your blog after many weeks! I get the names of nettles and thistles mixed up, too. I was just thinking about that this morning as I (carefully) pulled out thistles along with dandelions and thought that I really needed to watch out for the nettles and bring gloves with me next time. This is the first time I've really been out weeding in the garden. Now, I'm very curious about nettle soup, because we have enough nettles to feed a small horde. Lui puts them in salad sometimes, and for some reason they don't sting. I know we could also eat the dandelion greens, but I'm a little leery of them.
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