Many Guests, Many Veges

The tomatoes lasted until the end of January, and even tonight there are probably a few wizened ones left. It has been an amazing winter, warm beyond what anyone has ever seen.

Our New England family is hunkered down watching the snow fall, thinking about tomorrow when all that snow will have to be removed.

  And, here in paradise, I spent the day setting out seedlings, weeding, mulching, planting the new crops to join the broccoli, collards, carrots, and potatoes we are already enjoying. The porch is full of dozens of heirloom tomato and pepper starts I planted just after Christmas that will go into the garden in a couple of weeks. Many of them will go to the school/community garden and to friends.

 It is a new thing to have had vegetables from the garden non-stop for the entire year. Yeah, sometimes there are a lot of repeats. Collards and broccoli several times a week, salad every night.

Yesterday, when we made a last breakfast for our departing guests, we had those exquisite tiny new red potatoes with the eggs from a neighbor and the last of the tomatoes.

My brother and his wife had been visiting for two and a half weeks. They stayed in our lovely guest house that perches on a ridge overlooking the pond. My husband  and I and my brother and his wife have spent two or three weeks together every year for the past twelve years. We have been in Italy and France several times, to Alaska, to New Zealand and places closer to home. Sometimes our sisters were a part of these trips, but always it has been the four of us.

This time they came to visit us here and it was the best visit ever. I could be working in the garden and listen to my brother playing his violin from the porch on the guest house. We read and talked our heads off about books and politics and family. They loved the outdoor shower and the walks through the woods and the panorama of Florida spring with the wild yellow jasmine vines in the trees. We ate marvelous dinners and took day trips all around the vicinity and we had friends over and we sat on the bench by the pond and watched the birds.

It was a perfect visit from this big brother of mine. How I enjoyed the several hours when he prepared a bed for the strawberries and tenderly inserted the plants into the compost amended bed. When it's a long visit, everything doesn't have to be addressed immediately; important issues come in bits, more to come later.