out in the early

I love mornings. I love being awake before anyone in the house and in the world at large. The luxurious extra time afforded by going to bed early is so completely appealing to me. Who cares about late night tv anyway. I woke up early this morning... 5:30 or so, and got out of bed. We live pretty close to a beautiful state park, so I loaded Chaucer up into the truck and off we went for a very early morning walk. It was so early that the birds weren't even up to their vocal crescendo. The fog was still thick in the trees and the air was silent. This is what I love. It is intimate really. I love the closeness of atmosphere.

As I was walking along, allowing Chaucer to run wild and free down the road and in the woods, river etc, I walked up to this apple tree, because it was there, on the side of the road, with apples weighing down its branches, and low and behold, simply the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen was there tucked around one of the branches. It was beautiful really... although it did remind me of a tomato horn worm (my nemesis), but it was green and red and blue and absolutely huge!!! Maybe close to five inches long. crazy... So, I took a picture and ogled it crazily for a few minutes.

I love mornings, and today, for both me and Chauc, was a great one.

Thank you quiet,

thank you fog,

thank you solitude.

Basil Pesto

Basil Pesto, most people just call this pesto, but there are really tons of different types of pestos. "Pesto" actually means "to pound" in Italian. I almost tried to make some this time in my mortar and pestle, but it was still a bit too daunting.

My basil, Genovese Basil, grew so well this year. It's important to treat it right so it doesn't grow into tall treeish things that fall over. Pretty early on, you should start shaping it into bushes by nipping the tops off at the first branch out of leaves. Just leave the two side growth of leaves and take the center stem. The two side growths will then take over and the basil will start to bush out. just keep doing this ever once and a while, and you will end up with nice full bushes of basil.

I picked as much Basil as I could hold between two arms, and I still have a ton of it still

growing. (So, if anyone wants a bunch of Basil just come on over!! I mean that.)

Making Pesto is actually super easy. I followed a recipe that I have used before... I think its Nigella Lawson's on the

food network, but they are all very similar.

5 cups of Fresh Basil (leaves and supple stems only) if your basil has flower spikes make sure to not include these because they are really bitter.

1 peeled Garlic clove

1/4 cup of pine nuts

big grind of pepper, and a pinch of salt

1/2 cup of finely grated parmesean

1/2 cup of olive oil

Before I tell you how to put all of this together, I want to remind you that in recipes like t

his the quality of the ingredients really shows through. Get really good olive oil and parmesan. Use freshly ground pepper. Be good to your pesto.

So push all of the basil into the bowl of a food processor. Include the garlic, pine nuts, pepper and salt and pulse it all until it's nicely minced. You might have to stop the thing and push the basil down a few times. Make sure to scrape the sides down with a rubber spatula.

Then, once it is all minced up, start the processor on low and slowly trickle in the olive oil. I used the same 1/4 cup measuring cup for the pine nuts. I streamed it in and and once the first 1/4 cup was done, I stopped it and scraped down the sides. Then I refilled the 1/4 cup and repeated.

Process this until you have a nice pasty pesto. It shouldn't be liquidy, it should be the

consistency of...hmm... creamed spinach? That sounds too gross.... I can't think of any other thing that

consistency. Just like a nice paste not a liquid.

At any rate, once it is done, scrape it out into a bowl and fold in the parmesan....... Done!

I freeze mine in ice cube trays and keep them in a ziplock bag through the winter.

Jenny and I recently went out to North Hampton for a date without the kids. (First time ever) and we had lunch at a great place, Sylvester's. I had the Smithie's Favorite: which was a grilled cheese smothered with pesto. It was amazing!!!!! Here is my attempt at reliving that experience.

We also make pesto pizza, which is a basic pizza crust lightly coated with olive oil, pesto and cheese. Yum!

Enjoy

cilantro pesto

Ah, Cilantro Pesto. I made this two years ago and it lasted through the entirety of the year. It has a freshness that can't be touched in the dead of winter and in the summer it is exactly the way that summer should taste!

I just took in the first harvest of cilantro this morning. It's important to do that before it goes to flower. The leaves loose their vitality and taste to a degree once the plant flowers. Mine was shooting up spikes of frondy kind of leaves and I new it was now or never. Another thing about growing cilantro that makes it nice, is that the plants are so forgiving. I left about a quarter of the existing leaves on each plant and they will grow into full bushy cilantro plants again within a couple of weeks. Harvesting this stuff is a joy in itself: The smell is amazing.

So, what do you do with a whole harvested garden row of cilantro? MAKE PESTO!! This pesto freezes so well, and doesn't loose a bit of its color. Really, great stuff. The lime really adds to the

natural flavor of the Cilantro, it doesn't get in the way.

I used a recipe that I found three years ago on a foody blog post... here is the link, http://5secondrule.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/summertime-is-pesto-time-with-an-overabundance-of-basil-in-my-earth-box-the-boys-and-i-head-outside-on-hot-afternoons-to-p.html. Kind of a big link... anyway, I took between 8 to 10 bunches of cilantro out of my garden and made pesto out of the whole lot of it. So, I have about 8 to 10 times the amount of pesto that

the recipe makes. The final product fit nicely in a larger cereal bowl.

It took about half an hour to finish it up. I would also recommend listening to The Civil Wars while making this. I did, and although I'm not guaranteeing that the pesto will taste better for it, I bet it might. :)

Here is the basic recipe with my own little tweaks here and there.

You can compare it against the original on the blog post that I linked to above.

1 bunch of cilantro (the original blog said to discard the stems a short distance from the leaves, but if you are growing your own cilantro, the stems don't get nearly as woody as the store bought stuff and they have a ton of flavor, so I treat them like asparagus, I bend them until they snap and use the part closest to the leaves. If they don't snap clean then they are too woody to use in the pesto).

1 half a lime, zest and juice

a grind or two of black pepper

3 tablespoons of Canola Oil. (I actually like the clean taste of this better than Olive Oil. This pesto should taste fresh and clean.)

1/16 Tbs of salt. (just a tiny pinch)

And that's it. I grated the limes with a microplane. Everything is pretty straight forward here. Combine the cilantro, lime juice and zest, Black Pepper, and salt in a food processor. Start the thing spinning, then drizzle in about half of the oil as it spins around. Stop it, scrape down the sides with a spatula, then start it up again and drizzle in the rest of the oil. You should really do this in a small steady stream as the pesto churns around. Also, I would advise making at least a double recipe, it doesn't really make a ton and, at least in my food processor, it kind of sat under the blades and didn't blend as well until I added another full recipe to the mix. Plus, it uses up a whole lime nicely.

That's it. Hope you enjoy it. If you choose to make some and try freezing it, I did it in ice cube trays and then kept the little green jewels in a ziploc in the freezer.

Radishes

This is my ode of love to radishes.

Derived from the Latin, Radix, meaning root, the radish was domesticated before Roman times. I love the little guys, they are the first color that comes out of my garden.

They really are magical: I had nothing four days ago, just some greens and today, I have these little red beauties. These are cherry bell radishes. The first of the season are so mild and and juicy with just a tiny bit of pepper at the finish.

I don't have a lot of history with radishes, but here is what I have. I remember my father growing them in the garden even though no one in my family liked them. The natural progression of this was that the radishes grew so much that my early memories of them are of huge woody, cracked things that were so overly peppery that no one but old hardened men may have been willing to eat them.

I also worked for a plastic injection molding factory while I was in college. I was sitting in the "QC'S" office and Irec, the manager on duty came in. Irec was seriously Polish... like as Polish as a man could physically get. He talked with a thick accent that reminded me of Russia. He was also an Ex-merchant marine. He was big and intimidating, but a complete puppy underneath it all. At any rate, Irec loved to talk about all of the vast and rich experiences he had had in his past. In reference, and defense of Poland, Irec wisely said conspiratorially: (please feel free to extend your "R"s and draw out your vowels) "David... (pronouced Daved) Poland is like a radish, its red on the outside but white all in the middle. He winked and walked out of my office leaving me to consider Communism and all of its subtleties.

I am not sure about the political unrest at the heart of Poland, but I will tell you that these red, first appearing vegetables of the season are among my favorites.

#2

Girls are popcorn
fidget
squeak
giggle
smirk
whisper smile whisper
shift
gab gab gab gab gab
glance...glance...
shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(pop)

a poem a day!!!!!!!!!

OK, so, right now my students are all freaking out because I assigned one poem a day for the whole month. YEAH!!!!!! EVIL!!!!!!!! Here is my first one.
Everyone is concerned with
what lies deep within
the heart and soul and such things
But it is in your face
that I see you
a shallow, light-filled stream
laughing across the surface
And I am sure that
your bedrock is down there
hardened and broken
but on this leafless spring morning
I am looking for the sun.

My Road

For all of my students... I am sick of keeping two blogs that are primarily the same thing, so, I am only going to keep this one from now on.

(remember, you can click on any of these pictures to make them larger)

(I took all of these today on a little walk down my street)

My Road...

I want to challenge any of you to a "road" challenge. I propose that I live on the complete nicest road in Rutland. I know I do, and I am going to prove it to you. My road has character. It's really, really old and has really cool things about it that those newer roads can't even touch. Things like trees... not just trees though, old, huge trees, and fruit trees. Grapes grow wild on the side of the road and there are pear trees in the old pasture. Apple trees completely line my road.

If you went by in a car, you would never even notice them... but take a walk and you can smell them.

My road is tiny, less than a quarter mile long. There are definitely less than twenty, more like fifteen. Most of them are really old. One of the nicest used to be a tavern in the 1800's.

To top that off, the writer of "A History of Rutland Massachusetts", Jonas Reed, used to live there in the 1800's. It has a cold cellar and a really old barn with a ghost pony.... don't ask, just believe me. It also still has the horse hitch at the front of it.

Alright you say, you think I have won already, I haven't even started yet! My road has the continuation of the old cart road that goes up into the woods after the tarred road curves away. It's is super beautiful, and rocky. We call it "Stony." There is a cart path that heads into the woods from it that goes in around five miles all the way down to the Ware river that runs behind my house. There is an old stone that now rests on the common in the center of town. It is an Indian "corn stone." They found that 100 years ago down that path into the woods behind my house.

I am still going... There is a path that leads to an school house about 2oo yards from my house.

The best is still to come.

Ok, so that tavern, the one that Jonas Reed lived in, has a huge barn that once kept a whole bunch of cows and such. Well, my road has a tunnel under it that no one knows about. The cows used to cross under the road and into pasture through it. I wen't under there today and it is still in great condition.

What other road has a tunnel under it built over 100 years ago?

I love my road.

So, yesterday was my birthday...

It was a good one: lobster rolls, cupcakes, and I'm 39. Last year of my thirties. When I am 50, Henry will be able to drive and Nora will be officially a teenager. When I am 60, they will both be out of college and working it.... 50 and Henry Driving.... why isn't this settling right in my stomach.

Nutter Butter Creme Patties , mosquitoes, and staying up way too late.

We went to the drive ins for the first time this summer last night. It was great. There are some standards that must be met for a successful night at the drive ins. Nutter Butter Creme Patties are one of those things. It is the only time we buy these. Also, jammas and pillows for the kids. There is something really special about taking your pillow into the car, a little piece of personal comfort, and maybe even more than that, a piece of security, to take with you where ever you are going. I remember loving that. We watched Toy Story 3. Henry proclaimed it, "Too Scary" at the end, which really meant a couple things; it was too scary, and too sad. He won't say anything is too sad. I have no idea where he gets this stoicism. I am about the least non-emotive father known to man. But he really resists things like that. Anyway, the drive ins were everything that they should have been. Henry stayed up the whole time and even on the ride home. Nora didn't last so long. She started to get really irritable about 3/4 of the way through and then completely fell asleep two seconds into the drive home. Another nice thing about the drive ins is carrying sleeping children into bed afterward.

:)

Garden post 2

Right, well, the transplanted Brandywines are finally snapping back. It seems that the purple Crims are doing the best out of all of them. My arugula is doing awesome and is getting close to harvest time.I will probably replant the row afterward. My cukes have their first true leaves. I am going to build a trellis for them this year. I got a blister from raking the weeds from between the rows today.... owie.

Garden post 1

Well, it must be the end of the school year if my head is clear enough to blog again. I went out to weed my garden and lo and behold, deer prints. I checked everywhere and didn't see any damage to my tomatoes. A few tiny, helpless, little purple basil plants were crushed to death. But I will accept their deaths if it was in defense of the rest of my garden. Everything seems to be going well. I even have garlic chives coming up, which didn't sprout at all last year. So, 1 point for garden, 0 for nasty invaders.

a sonnet

a leading

This forest shares its secrets with the wind,
Its whispered acorns; deeply buried prayers.
Where ferns glow green and stretch out spongy limbs,
And lichened rocks are holy altar stairs.
Black beetles genuflect and flash their shells.
Moth’s tattered wings reach out to supplicate.
The breath within the soil gently swells,
And lifts up cantillations to the day.
A tree trunk lays itself in feathered moss,
While rings of ivy lash it to the ground.
The ancient Oak knew nothing of it’s loss,
And wears the vines as Hera wears her crown.
I knew all this when I was still a child,
When God still showed His nature in the wild.

quick

dig my feet in

make the earth below me spin

watch the green and snapping branches

coalesce and dim

I am among the light, the barely here,

the about to begin.

First Snow

As I grow older, I have really come to see the first snow as something magical... or maybe its the influence of all those "Calvin and Hobbes" books that I have.

I have beautiful memories about being outside in the snow... the common thread in almost all of them is the silence. After all of the sledding is done and exhaustion had thoroughly set in, we always laid there, back in sled, and let the snow fall on us. The silence then was comforting.

Even more so, in the deep woods, when I would go tracking for deer. I would go across the street and would inevitably find deer tracks. Then I would follow them for as far as I could. There were fifty acres of uninterupted woods across the street from my parents house, and once led inside, the other world was lost. leaves, snow, dark tree trunks and silence.

Nora and Henry have a lot to look forward to.

pick it up, put it in, throw away the bag.

I helped to insulate the upstairs yesterday. My friend Tony, who is an insulator, came over and as a favor, insulated the upstairs of my house. So we are that much closer to having an upstairs. It is all VERY exciting. It would be even more exciting if we had the money to do it. But, thank God, Tony is doing this as a favor, and we are getting a very professional job done up there. Any way, at one point, he needed help and my job for a couple hours was to load bales of mulched up, treated newspaper product into a hopper while be blew it into the walls upstairs. It reminded me of some of the jobs I had before I was a teacher and I thought that I would write a little about them.

My first job, while I was a sophomore in highschool, was working at "Olsons," a restaurant in East Templeton. I was a dishwasher. My neighbor Greg got me the job there. The owner was an interesting guy. I don't remember much except for a deep loathing that I had for the man because, weekly, he also demanded that the dishwashers come to his house and mow the lawn. Even then I knew that was kind of sketchy. I can't remember quitting that job. I think I just stopped going. And that was Olsons.

My second job was at a Supermarket in Gardner. It was called the "Food Farm." I worked their for exactly one week. I had no idea what to do socially. I remember the first day I asked another employee where to find some food item that a customer was looking for and they gave me crap about it. So I didn't ask from that point forward and got fired for being a "know-it-all." I also had a woman with a beard ask me where the cherries were. She really had a beard, it's burned into my my memory.

My third job... god what was my third job... I remember a few crash and burn jobs...I worked in the video section of Stop and Shop... but I don't think that was my third job... Oh, got it, I worked at "Horse and Buggy Feeds" in Winchendon. This was an interesting job. It covered a whole assortment of things, feeding tiny chickens, quails and ducks (my favorite part), repotting plants, getting sacks of grain. I ended up liking this job a bit, but I got fired for some unknown reason. They accused me of stealing some flowers. WHAT?? I am still offended at this. Then they fired me for wearing the wrong shoes. That was that. I was kind of hurt by that because, A. I kind of enjoyed the job, and B. I didn't steal anything! I did however lose about 10 baby chicks by knocking over the warming table by mistake. They ran everywhere..."peep" peep" just everywhere and I was trying to keep them quiet while chasing down every last one of them. The owner did end up coming down stairs and seeing me desperately chasing them down. Maybe that's why he canned me... who knows

more later.

Mark Twain

I went and saw an actor portray Mark Twain last night. It was pretty incredible really. I had forgotten the power that that man had. His essays are a beautiful mix of biting sarcasm and incredibly strong message. I can't believe how relevant his writing still is. Some of it went over my head, if I am honest. Still, I was really moved by his words. Here is one of the things said that really impacted me.

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

He was really an amazing man. I was very happy to have gone last night.

db

Sunday

I guess Jenny is getting sick. She is back in bed after initially getting up with the kids. I stayed up too late again last night. I really need to get to bed early enough to get eight hours of sleep. That is the goal. Today, we are going to church, then Jen is supposed to go back to work at 3. I am thinking that neither of those things are going to happen. She seemed kind of miserable... but she always seems miserable in the morning. What is up with morning and night people anyway. I am definitely a morning person. I wonder what all of that is really about. I have this ideal in my mind. I can picture getting up early and watching the house grow light. I like to have all of my ducks in a row before the day actually starts. I really do accomplish that a good amount of time too. The only thing that stands in the way is when I am tempted into staying up too late, like last night. It might be a tv show like Destination Truth, that comes on at 10:00, or, maybe the kids were crazy and I can finally hear myself think. I don't know. Optimally I would be going to be before 10, something like 9:30, and I would get up at 5:30. Then I would leave at 6:50 to get to work for 7.

Today is undecided. Sometimes I like em that way.

db

machine head

I woke at six this morning without an alarm. It means a couple things to me. I really like not hearing the alarm and I am always kind of in awe that my head knows what time it is. It also means that school is officially controlling me. Its ok though, people's job control them and that my friend is the way it is. It was below 60 degrees in this house this morning and I turned on the heat. Jenny is sadistic about not turning on the heat but too freaking bad! It was really cold. It takes a while for our house to heat up because of the radiant heat so it is still really cold in here. I love waking before the rest of everyone is up. It is this silent time.

It wasn't even really light out yet. Jenny just told me today that summer isn't officially over yet. I find that pretty hard to believe. The leaves are changing and I am in the mood for fall. Picking apples, baking goods, cool nights, indian summers. It is all really nice. Not to mention the lack of mosquitoes. That might just be the best part. I have to get myself going with my photography class. I am not treating it like a class at all. I haven't even bought the book. I haven't started working on the assignment due tomorrow, which will be a still life. I have two ideas for it, one involving my chess set, and one involving wine and infidelity. Nora woke up about five minutes ago frantically looking for her binky. I have no idea how I am going to ween her off of that thing.

I wake early

It is really dark out still. The whole house is sleeping, just like I like it. I taught on word symbology yesterday and it is one of my favorite things to teach on. Today I am going to a wedding, and something before that that I can't remember.

I have been back to work now for about a week and a half, and I have to say that I really like what I do. I am staying in school till four every day now just to keep caught up on all of the peripheral things and it is great. I miss my kids but not terribly. I know they are going to be there when I get home. I really like my classes this year. I am having former students come back almost every day and that really makes me happy. Things are good.

I am going to my new photography class Monday night. I can't wait to see if it is something that is going to benefit me or not. It better for $800.

Hmm... nothing much this morning then.

db