Sunday, February 21, 2016

Cookies 'n dinges


Spicebush cookies. Basic pâte sablée: flour, butter, powdered sugar, egg yolks, and the wild card of ground spicebush (Lindera benzoin) berries. Packed for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Walk I led on Saturday.


I was expecting just 15 walkers, but we had 40, thanks to the very warm, spring-like weather. So... the cookies had to be stretched a little! I think I had 34.

Today it rains and later this week we will dip below freezing, again. In the garden I am: thinking about making a discrete bug hotel (boutique size), using all the viburnum trimmings from late last year when I tried to impose some order and encourage a sense of form in the very shaggy corner shrub; considering keeping bees (don't tell the Frenchman, yet - Hi, Vince!);  pondering possums, and whether they will squash my garden or eat snails... there are two that eat cat food two doors down and I think they visit us; wondering when to add my collection of powdered egg shells to the vegetable plot (calcium to raise pH, to supplement the crushed oyster shells already dug in); looking forward to unfurling the beautiful (white!) umbrella from Patio Living, still packed in its very long box; and wondering whether the Zika-tide will prompt Brooklyn parents-to-be to demand city spraying against stripe-legged mosquitoes. I did not christen this Carroll Gardens garden Chez Mosquito for nothing...

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3 comments:

  1. am also considering bees for the yard. the local beekeepers group meets 5 minutes away, so will at least join for a year. I think this is a project that takes a LOT of planning and new knowledge, but am strongly leaning that way. hope you will check it out... city rules and all. Bzzzz!

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  2. I'm just up the way from you in Cobble Hill, and the mosquitoes drive us crazy. We had them into December! I'd love a blog-style symposium on safe mosquito control when the season rolls around. All the well-known precautions that I have taken mean nothing if one's nearby neighbor has standing water in their yard.

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  3. It sounds like you are about as ready for spring as I am! Glad I don't have the same problem with mosquitoes that you are dealing with down there...of course we have plenty of other bugs up here in the mountains.

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