A routine of sorts is emerging from the uncertainty of these days; I work for a few hours every day, typically actually at work, and my BF is here for about a week or so and home in NoVA for a week or so. If the weather is nice enough my day typically involves some sort of gardening, and if not it involves some sort of housework and errands. I continue to make and send masks. There was a rough day when the winds were high last week and an entire tray of 21 Echinacea seedlings was upended and the soil blown away. Months of careful tending gone in a flash, c'est le jardin. The worst part is that I had pricked out the two most developed seedlings and potted them up separately, only to have them die off when hot weather overheated the greenhouse. Spring is treacherously fickle.
It does bring Easter with it, however, and although never one of my favorite holidays it did give a chance to teach my BF how to make Ukrainian Easter eggs called pysanky. Note that I am not of Ukrainian descent, and yet have learned and used this technique for years, quite unlike anything my family did when I was growing up. In this version you blow out the egg through a small hole at one end, seal it with wax, and use a tool called a kistka to heat wax and apply it to the egg, dyeing in different and successively darker colors between applications of wax. At the end you melt all of the wax off and are left with decorated eggs in any design you can imagine. I only had about five colors this year so our palette was a bit limited, but it worked. I also made chicken curry sliders (hardly an Easter food) and cobbler (an absolutely anytime food).
The puppy is enjoying the extra attention, and I feel considerably better about leaving her to go to work when I know she has someone to play with while I'm gone. He doesn't seem to hate it. I feel a tiny bit guilty because I am enjoying getting to spend so much time with them both that even the announcement from our University president this last week that layoffs and furloughs are imminent didn't seem so dire. I really fear that a big catastrophe is looming and I am unprepared. Then again, having just completed my taxes for this year, perhaps that feeling is just despondency brought on by paying thousands of dollars again to the IRS.
A routine of sorts is emerging from the uncertainty of these days; I work for a few hours every day, typically actually at work, and my BF is here for about a week or so and home in NoVA for a week or so. If the weather is nice enough my day typically involves some sort of gardening, and if not it involves some sort of housework and errands. I continue to make and send masks. There was a rough day when the winds were high last week and an entire tray of 21 Echinacea seedlings was upended and the soil blown away. Months of careful tending gone in a flash, c'est le jardin. The worst part is that I had pricked out the two most developed seedlings and potted them up separately, only to have them die off when hot weather overheated the greenhouse. Spring is treacherously fickle.
It does bring Easter with it, however, and although never one of my favorite holidays it did give a chance to teach my BF how to make Ukrainian Easter eggs called pysanky. Note that I am not of Ukrainian descent, and yet have learned and used this technique for years, quite unlike anything my family did when I was growing up. In this version you blow out the egg through a small hole at one end, seal it with wax, and use a tool called a kistka to heat wax and apply it to the egg, dyeing in different and successively darker colors between applications of wax. At the end you melt all of the wax off and are left with decorated eggs in any design you can imagine. I only had about five colors this year so our palette was a bit limited, but it worked. I also made chicken curry sliders (hardly an Easter food) and cobbler (an absolutely anytime food).
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