A Vignette of Late Spring

Although housework has crept farther into my schedule, I devoted this Thursday to doing nothing much at all, in honour of Ascension Day. The Ascension is a statutory holiday here in Germany, and so it was even quiet in the streets until the livelier afternoon. Summer is nudging in and pushing temperatures to the 20°C mark, while the nights still dip under 10°C, and I think spring itself has been tardy this year despite the warm winter. The new oak leaves, for instance, are still so new that they are almost more yellow than green; and there is a funny mixture of late forsythia flowers, perishing tulips and thriving tulips, bleeding-heart, withering grape hyacinths, long-blossomed daffodils and fresh daffodils, in the streets, and even a late-blooming, violet primrose on our windowsill.

We ordered pizza — tonno with tuna and onion; margherita; and an anchovy-and-salami variety; and Papa cooked smoky Black Forest ham with eggs; and the clay teapot was kept stocked with tea. A bag full of rhubarb (in season at €1,29 per kilo) is still in the pantry, and I have yet to make into a compôte. But we shall have it, most likely, with rice pudding tomorrow. Then I will finally wash up the big pots and pans, too. (Unless Mama beats me to it.) On the shopping list are the ingredients for a generous round of chocolate pudding with whipping cream and raspberries, which are unlikely to be ripe around Berlin yet but apparently are in Spain; and a potful of red lentils with celery root, carrots, leeks and red wine. I suspect that the leeks will be less — well . . . — happy than they were at the height of winter, but are likely still in season. Of course I hate washing and cutting them, but their colour and flavour are agreeable enough that — given enough time to rest and forget the ordeal between leeky dishes — I return to the charge regularly. Asparagus is still in season, and famously at home in the sandy soils of Brandenburg; I think we have devoured but one (half of a?) kilo this year, imported from Greece in early March or February, and green rather than white, so far.