Yesterday's meal was a season opener: on March 29, I harvested our first measurable home-grown greens! This is always a banner day for me, and it came especially early this year. The top photo is a mixture of chives, garlic chives, garlic shoots, and sorrel, which I used to garnish beef stroganoff. The second is wintered-over kale, arugula, and spinach, mixed with (obviously) store cherry tomatoes. 

Today will also be a banner day as I am getting my first Covid vaccine this morning, at the clinic set up at Scarborough Downs racetrack. I'm excited, but prepared to be ill. If necessary, we will have grilled-cheese sandwiches for dinner, and then I will lie on the couch and look at a basketball game . . . unless the Electrical God isn't done cursing us.

If I don't get ill, then I'll return to my editing chore, and then I'll haul a little more gravel for the Lane, and I'll prep a garden bed for planting carrots, beets, and baby cabbage.

Oh, here's some exciting house news: Tom is starting to plan his next project--building our deck! When we bought the house, it had a rickety stoop outside the side door, which was too dangerous to use, so Tom demolished it immediately. Since then we've had temporary stairs into the kitchen. The new deck will wrap around the house, from the back door into the back yard, with stairs at either end. This will give us not only an outdoor sitting and eating space but also allow us to move forward with the backyard design--specifically, laying paths and creating beds around them.

I'm really pleased about the deck. I know we still need kitchen-cupboard doors, but with spring on the way I'd way rather expand our outdoor options. One huge advantage of living in the city: very few biting insects . . . no black flies, manageable mosquitoes. Sitting outside on a summer night is a real pleasure, and we haven't had a good place to do that.