Quarantine 14, Happiness

A happy day! Nature looks more lovely each consecutive day. My camelia is in bloom. It is a late variety, one I planted after several ones with bright red flowers and blossoming earlier, failed to thrive in my soil. This one has flowers which look like tight small rolls of tissue paper. They never open to show their hearts. The first few years the shrub produced no flowers, just buds, which fell off without opening at all. At last the plant produced flowers, but they quickly fell off as well. Now the camelia seems to have reconciled itself with its existence in my garden and has made up its mind to shows its best side. It is now covered in delicate flowers, and I am happy! 

Happiness was also a small tour through the bulb fields. The fields are mostly bright yellow, white, blue, deep purple and lilac coloured, daffodils and hyacinths being the first bulbs to flower. But some tulips are appearing as well, and one or two fields are now bright red.

 dare to be different

 

 

 

 

Everywhere along the roads the growers are selling tulips and daffodils, fat packets of them. I bought 50 tulips for € 5! Very cheap indeed, apparently because of the locked borders in many countries, our export has come to a halt. We export a lot of flowers to Italy and the UK, but Corona has stopped all that. Once home I filled three vases with them, which brightens up my room and my mood considerably. 

5 potted-up hyacinths in a nice container cost only € 3! I could not believe it. And thanks to technology, there were laminated sheets of paper with QR codes for the different flowers, which I could scan with the QR scanner of my bank app on my smartphone, so that I could pay without having to handle money. All to limit the danger of being infected by this nasty virus. There is some virtue in new technology. 

This morning I noticed the first brown frogs had returned to in my garden pond, another sure sign of Spring. They do not make so much noise as the green ones do, fortunately. Otherwise my neighbours might be very unhappy.

It is still cold, but when the sun is out and one is out of the wind, it is lovely and warm. The rest of my azaleas are now trying to blossom as well. 

 Yesterday I had a baking and cooking spree, which also made me happy. One of the things I tried was a pecan- maple syrup tart or flan. I did not have pecans, but I did have a large glass jar full of walnuts, so I decided to use those nuts instead. After all, nuts are nuts (I am referring to food, not to human beings). It was a lot of work, making the dough, first blind baking the case, and later mixing the crushed walnuts, the syrup and honey and the beaten eggs. The kitchen looked a bit like a battlefield, but the smell of the finished product was delicious, although it is not a nice looking one. Because of the syrup, it is a dark and sombre tart. However, the proof is in the eating, and the taste was yummy, although a bit sweet, but that was largely neutralised by dollops of unsweetened double cream. Nevertheless, I realized it would take me a long time to eat it all, especially as nuts are filling. So instead of freezing it in portions, I offered it to a neighbouring family with three hungry kids who will have no problem finishing it in no time, like locusts.

 

Looking somewhat strange and messy: very dark, and the pastry isn't neatly draped in the tin. The trouble was I didn't have the correct loose based fluted flan tin, and used this instead. It was too big and I couldnt cut off the pastry neatly. However, all those things did not affect the taste! 

Collecting a leg of lamb the butcher had prepared for me also made me happy. I know it is Lent and frugality and sobriety would be appropriate during his period. Lamb is eaten at Easter. Normally we practice some form of fasting during Lent, while going on living our comfortable, normal lives. But since this Lent we seem to be living in the desert, without any social contacts, I decided I needed to be kind to myself in order to survive these months of loneliness. So tomorrow the kitchen will be filled with the aromatic smells of roasted lamb. I wish I could share that meal with somebody, or clone myself into two persons, even if we have to be 1,5 meters apart. Just to enjoy that meal together.

Iris reticulata