...require special measures. Or special bits of creativity.

We used to have semi-regular boardgame evenings with friends, and these are, of course, out of the question now. However... I also invested, quite recently, in a new and special tripod for my camera, for research trips such as the one to Augsburg (because I realised when going through the pictures that the yield-to-crap ratio could profit a huge lot from a better angle when taking the pictures, and that means a special macro tripod with a boom).

So. What do you do when you want to play boardgames and have a) willing friends, b) a fair number of mobile end devices, c) a cupboard full of boardgames including a substantial number of co-op games, d) adequate internet access, and e) a nice large table?

Right.

This.



We had to swap the beautifully painted minis for the standard-issue solid coloured ones, for better visibility on the screen, but it all did work pretty well.

And yes, we managed to rescue enough people out of the burning building before it collapsed - it was close, though!

One thing I learned this year: Nasturtiums are not necessarily an annual plant - one that I had in a pot in the wintergarden is now already blooming happily, and I've been enjoying the flowers a lot.



You could see some more of the flowers in the picture if they weren't so damn tasty! I've been eating quite a few already, and I am now hoping for many, many more.

In case you've never had the experience of eating a nasturtium flower, it's hard to describe. You have both the flowery sweetness of the flower (thank you, Captain Obvious) and the sharp, mustard-like tang of the leaves, but without the leafy texture. That is just the flower and the crunchy crispness of the flower stem, with the tangy juice coming out. If you have the chance, try it.

I've not been as successful with some other gardening things - my Ecuador Purple chili seeds all have lost their will to sprout, so I need to find somewhere to get new seeds. I've also been unlucky with the last Angel Beans, sadly. Does this mean I have an excuse to do some seed-shopping? Hmm....

The cat is lying on the desk, purring quietly and looking outside, where it's cold, but sunny. I've been working on restocking some things (making new spinning packs, for instance); my mail backlog is the usual size, there's a paper to proofread and amend.

It's normal work, and life feels very normal at times, accordingly. And then some weird thing happens - like having to check whether postal service still runs to a specific place. Or the postie delivering something and asking me whether I want to sign or not (I didn't, for us both; he took a photo instead, documenting the delivery. Smart method.)

Sometimes it feels like this is all just a dream. All too unreal to be real - though, of course, it is. Still, the sun is shining, there's bees outside, the peach tree is starting to bloom... and there's a list of shops in town that are now offering delivery of goods, as the shops have to stay closed during the lockdown.

Now... to ensure that these businesses survive, it is of course good to shop with them, right? Basically, that is sort of a civic duty at this point in time. Probably you have a local shop in need in your town as well, struggling for business survival now. So this is the perfect excuse, actually, to buy hand-made chocolates from a fancy chocolate shop. Or some glorious yarn from a knitting store. Or from a small hand dyer. Get some new plants for the garden from a local nursery. Or splurge on something other nice... because you can, because it will make you happy in these times, and it will help the small business. (If you need something, consider not ordering online via one of the big players, especially the big A, which is still treating their workers very badly. Instead, try looking for a local shop in dire need of support and business right now. Who knows - you might discover a new favourite shop?)

I'm writing all this just in case you needed an excuse to get yourself something pretty, of course. And now I'll go call that local nursery. We need fertiliser... and a plant or two.

There is a number of recipes intended to use up bread that is getting old - and I'm rather fond of this type of food. Whenever bread hereabouts threatens to get too old, it gets cut up into cubes, these are dried, and then they get packed away until needed. (Because we buy our bread in relatively small units in the bakery close-by, this is a rare occurrence... but then, there's the Textile Forum, where the caterers tend to bring way, way too much bread. Which, you've guessed it, gets cut up into cubes... and travels back home with me, causing much joy and serving as the base for quite a few servings of bread-based meals. It's not only delicious, it's also cutting down on food waste. Two good things in one.)

[caption id="attachment_5086" align="alignnone" width="486"] Bread mix, soaking. As you can see, it's a wild mix of all kinds of different breads... which can be a little surprising sometimes, when there's suddenly some pumpkin seed turning up!


One especially delicious way to use up that bread are Speckknödel (bacon dumplings). I was first introduced to those in Austria, and they are wonderful. Wonderful. It's basically old bread soaked in milk and/or water to make it soft again, mixed with egg (to hold it all together), onion, and smoked bacon, seasoned with salt and parsley, and then simmered in water. Traditionally, they are served with browned butter; a salad goes along with them nicely, as does red cabbage, or some other cabbagy vegetable.

Here's the recipe I usually use - the amount of liquid you need may vary depending on your bread:

250 g dry bread, cut into small cubes (c 1 cm side length works very well)
250 ml milk (or half milk, half water)
2 eggs
1 medium onion (ca. 80 g)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
80-100 g bacon (smoked bacon), diced
3 tablespoons flour (c 45 g)
salt
butter

Pour your liquid over the diced bread and let it stand for a while (at least an hour, so the moisture can spread out through the bread). Dice the onion finely, then sautee it until translucent. Mix onions and bacon with the moistened bread. Beat the eggs, add salt and chopped parsley, and add that mixture to the bread mix as well. Let sit for about 15 minutes.
In a sufficiently large pot, bring water to the boil. Add salt and turn heat down a bit. Form dumplings from the bread mix (I get about 12-14 dumplings from the mix) and gently place into the water; they should now simmer (not boil) for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, brown some butter in a small pan or pot.

[caption id="attachment_5087" align="alignnone" width="640"] Dumplings!


Serve dumplings with browned butter and salad, or another side. Leftover dumplings are very nice sliced up and fried in butter, or sliced up and eaten cold.

The water used to simmer the dumplings also makes a very nice base for a soup on the next day...

Very obviously, spring has not only come for the plants and flowers outside, but also for aphids. (Oh, and the cat brought home the first tick of the year yesterday.)

I have a few cooking herbs in pots in the winter garden, and they get used in the kitchen whenever I feel like it, or sometimes they even inspire me to make something that uses a lot of a specific herb (usually when that has grown a lot, and needs pruning or cutting back, and I don't want to throw all of the cutoff parts away). Among those are rosemary, thyme, laurel, marjoram, parsley... and chives.

The latter have been struggling for a while and not grown very enthusiastically, and so I left them alone over the winter - and now I discovered that they had gotten a new fan club, consisting of a metric ton of black aphids. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo, but basically the green bits of the chives were almost solid black with the little suckers... before I got them.

With the vacuum cleaner.

I have a new aphid-removal method, folks.

That was sort of a random-half-by-accident thing - I was vacuuming up bits of dirt and small dry leaves on the floor, and by accident a few of the chives stalks got pulled into the tube, and lo and behold - all the aphids from there were magically removed. So, obviously, I treated the rest of the chives the same. Instant reduction of the aphid colony by a lot!

Obviously, this method is best suited for robust plants with small leaves, so you can have them sucked into the front part of the vacuum cleaner's suction tube. Chives and marjoram (which also had a few of the guys), my experience says, are perfect for this and will take it like little troopers. This loving modern tech treatment, depending on the suction force you use, might also damage some of the leaves, but hey, there's always something.

The trick to it, as I have found out by now, is to do a few repeat aphid-sucking-sessions: There will probably be aphids on the top of the soil as well, which won't get sucked away, and some of them will just escape your loving ministrations. These, however, will later tend to take up the premium spots that were previously taken by their luckier (or, in this case, unluckier) colleagues and sit nicely on the leaves or stalks a few hours later. Premium spots indeed... to be spirited away by the magic of the suction tube. Repeat as necessary. Have aphid-free plants.

(If you are now thinking of aphid problems on plants outside in your garden, and extension cords to get your vacuum cleaner where it needs to be: We once vacuumed our lawn to remove lots and lots of anti-slip-on-ice gravel that had gotten there together with snow from the walkway during the course of the winter. The easiest way to get rid of those, in our reasoning, was to vacuum them away (it's an older, bag-free vacuum cleaner that is only used for rough things these days). It worked wonderfully, but we did get quite a few astonished looks from the neighbours, and some remarks as well. You might get the same for aphid treatment with a vacuum cleaner.)

Didn't I just blog about there being winter? It was about 24 hours that the white winter wonderfulness lasted - and then we transitioned right back into rather spring-like weather. It is getting closer to spring for now, really - there's the early flowers getting ready, the rose is showing first leaves, the peach tree as well. The first tomato seedlings have broken soil, too.

[caption id="attachment_5080" align="alignnone" width="640"] The first irises are blooming - I really love these, and they ring in spring for me more than snowdrops and narcissus.


Which means it's high time to finish pruning the willows (which is almost done, there's just a few stragglers left to take care of).

The willows are looking really gnarly in some parts, and some of them have grown to astonishing dimensions width-wise, while their direct neighbours are still rather slender rods, or have actually dried out and died. Some places have four strong, thick ones right beside each other, and some have one thick one and three thinner ones, and I really can't find a rhythm or reason behind this.

[caption id="attachment_5079" align="alignnone" width="640"] The willow fence - you can see that there's different thicknesses. There's no real reason for them to be so different, though...


The low arch that you can see at half height of the photo is the most problematic bit, and we're often having to replace the top of the arch with new shoots bent in, as that part tends to die off during the year - even if it had been growing strong for several years before. That's probably due to growing mechanics, so not much that can be done about it. (Should you be planning to plant a living willow fence, try to go for pointy arches, so the end point of every single element is the highest point of it, and not on a flat slope.)

While this is going on, I'm also trying to get some semblance of order into the garden before, as every year, everything deteriorates with the "I am not finding time to do stuff" syndrome that hits me in summer. For now, I'm really enjoying the early spring garden work. It's a welcome excuse to make the lunch break a little longer, or to have a bit of time in the afternoon to get off the computer and soak up some sunshine outside, and have a breath of fresh air...

There was actually snow yesterday and today. Winter! At last! It did look beautiful outside:



The cat, however, was thoroughly unimpressed:



Or, to be more precise: Not amused. While she did go outside for a stroll, she refused to lower her furry bottom onto the cold snow and instead preferred to come inside and lower it into the litter box.

Oh, cat. You do know that you have fur on your ass for a reason, right?