Lurgy monday

I've managed to pick up whatever bug Nas had last week. I was hoping I'd somehow escaped it, but alas, no such luck. So here I am, at home on the couch with my honey-lemon 'tea', my books, and my drafts of my thesis, while the sun shines beautifully through the windows. Alas. By staying inside for the next two-three days I'm hoping to beat this in time to see the concert we've been planning to see in York on Wednesday evening. I haven't been out of the city since I got back after Christmas. Plus, I really don't want to reschedule my five seminars on Thursday.

We made it up to the garden on Saturday - and to the garden centre. Nas dug a huge bed for potatoes and our garden-mate and I dug a couple more. We also found some lovely flowers to plant - poppies, heather, and something called 'snake-headed flotilary' which is apparently a native species that environmental groups are encouraging gardeners to re-introduce. It's really very pretty with flower heads that do look suspiciously like snake heads that are mottled purple and white. My thyme survived the 'winter' (such as it was!) - it's root system escaped the pot it was in and it anchored itself firmly to the ground where I'd left it. Nas had to dig around it to move it. And as another global-warming anecdote: our salad leaves are still coming up from last spring. Usually the cold should kill them off... and our romanesco broccoli survived as well! I was chuffed to find them though - every year, our garden gives us something unexpected, gifts from the ground - usually its potatoes.

Now we have onions, potatoes, and garlic ready to go into the ground in a couple weeks - aparently, there is still danger of frost at nights. We also got a kilo of majestic potatoes (that's both the name of the particular species, and a description of their taste and versatility) so we should have potatoes coming out of our proverbial ears come late summer.

Sunday, Nas and I walked down to the farmer's market in the city centre. Usually, I work at the library on the weekends it's held (1st and 3rd Sundays of the month) but I was off this weekend. It was fantastic - I love markets and could spend hours wandering around sampling things. This week we got some lovely game sausages from the Dales, some wild mushrooms (which we ate in a mushroom risotto last night whacked up with some delicious home-made veg stock a friend brought us and porcini mushroom stock), free-range organic eggs, local honey, lemon curd, and marmalade, and a freshly made baguette. I've recently converted to eggs and I'm eager to try whether, as Nasser claims, they really do taste better than battery-produced eggs. I love the taste of self-righteous satisfaction as much as the next person, so I'm betting they will. The wild mushrooms definitely challeged my perception of mushrooms - they actually tasted of mushroom. I don't remember the name of the ones we bought but they were lovely creamy things with a really rich, woody flavour. I like eating food that announces it's origins - these tasted of crumbling logs and mulch, something that caught in the mouth and nose that called up earth, dark colours and closeness.

This morning Nas commented that his entire breakfast was made with things bought locally - our market eggs and bread from the bakery round the corner. Soon we'll have our own produce to add to the table.

Oh and I did read the paper this weekend - Friday and Saturday actually. It's as I thought - nothing much has changed. Aparently shipping by sea is more harmful than air travel...I guess we should all get comfy where we are. They did also include a quite-handy guide to UK cycling trips - and I think the trains are still okay morally and environmentally. But that's only this week. Which reminds me, I need to call the city council and complain that my recycle bin is being emptied into the rubbish truck...