Well the blizzard of the century did not hit us....we spent the day waiting, watching, and in the end there was pretty much nothing. As we linger in the final days of January I begin to dream of spring. The snow will slowly creep away and reveal the anxious new sprout of spring. The fresh sharp points of green against dark soil and small patches of white snow are brilliant and magical. To satisfy my gardeners soul I look at images from last years soil.

Rosemary and thyme

Euphorbia and plum trees

The lovely and graceful blue flax

the front rock garden

The grey summer border.... I study last years images trying to remember where I tucked in the fall bulbs, what should be moved, what could be added. Now are the days of seed catalogs and ambitious ideas.

Since moving here I have become a collector of bones. Inside the cold heart of the deep freezer I keep a large zip lock bag containing the remnants of numerous Sunday roast dinners and summer steak barbeques. Yesterday with the help of some onions, celery, a carrot, and some herbs I made homemade beef stock. There is some serious magic that happens to homemade soup when you can forgo the dry little bullion cube for a aromatic and substantial homemade version. I feel like making stock is the responsible thing to do, you not only get so much for so little, but it is glamorous in ways that little dry cubes of mystery flavor just can never be. For Christmas I received a gorgeous shiny, large, and heavy French stockpot and this is where the magic happens.

Here is what I did.... Fill that bad boy half full with water Add your bag of beef bones, I had about 8 good sized bones I also added 1 meaty soup bone (we buy our beef from the farmer down the road and it is wonderful) Then I quartered an onion, leave the skin on and throw it in, ditto for a couple carrots, I give them a couple chops but I don't think you really need to. Next 3 stalks of celery I gave these guys a couple chops too then I roughly chopped the celery heart because the lovage has disappeared for the winter. Add some freshly ground pepper, be generous pepper is like love, sea salt a small handful, a healthy big pinch of herb de provence, and 5 or 6 bay leaves. Now just let that simmer away on the stove I left mine for about 4 hours. The result was a kitchen that smelled wonderful, after skimming off the fat and straining , I will have a bunch of frozen jars of delicious homemade soup possibilities.

I am what you can call a lazy blogger. I haven't posted in about a year, I will not offer up a carefully edited selection of excuses, I just never seem to get here often enough. That said I will get on with some of the latest projects we have or are about to undertake on our crumbling beauty. My husband rebuilt our basement entry this fall, the old entry had collapsed so we had a pit that you crawled into to gain access to the nether regions of our house. The new entrance is in one word solid. He constructed it with used railway ties, huge spikes, and some rebar for good measure. The finished product is lovely and practical and now I can easily navigate myself down to the under-ground portion of our house.