Back-porch local

By June

These long, sweet evenings, we collapse into the dinner hour. Days are full, and we get very, very empty, but who feels like cooking? We go out to eat...out the screen door. Thank goodness for the salad boxes on the back porch. With their abundance and some homemade bread and eggs fresh from the hens, we can feed ourselves simply and well.  We dine in splendor out there on the porch, among our greens (and reds and speckleds), leaning back in the Adirondacks and watching the birds flit back and forth across the meadow.

We over-wintered one four-by-four salad box, and the mache that burst onto the spring scene gave us the early greens we craved. Next came arugula and some beautiful mixed lettuce. I have no idea what variety of romaine we made into a Caesar salad this week, but it was romaine fit for Caesar himself.

The wrinkled, crinkled cress is wild out there now. After we finish our meal, Fern and Blossom graze around for more salad. They nab a little bubbly lettuce in foam green, then go for a ruby leaf. They love the cress most of all, crave it for its wasabi spike up the back of the nose, yowza! I admit it, I love that sensation too.

Often, on my way out to the big vegetable patch, I pinch a little nibble from the back porch. It reminds me why I'm off to shovel yet more compost: because nothing tastes better than something you can have seconds of -- straight from where it grows.