Dream goats!

by June

It's beginning to look a lot like Heidi around here...only without the spectacular mountains and the gruff old grandfather. But we do have goats and two young girls who love tending them. Buttercup and Clover are —at long last— home!

At first there was some crying. The doelings cried in their new pen, and Blossom and Fern cried because the doelings missed their mama and their old home. But we all sat in the grass and talked about patience and giving the babies some time, along with lots of love and fresh grass.

The love abounds now, thank goodness. The goats only cry when the girls walk away from them. Not that the girls walk away from them much. They pretty much run out in their jammies and stay out until the fireflies are flittering in the meadow.

While we were waiting for the goats, we spent a lot of time soaking up all things goat-y. We've joined up with the fun family over at Jump into a Book for a Heidi summer-reading adventure (along with Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson).  And we loved finding the latest version of Heidi on film (with Max von Sydow as the grandfather). It's a beautiful version that made us ache for the mountains and some curious goats to clamber about in the green grass.

It may not be the Alps around here, but the view...it is now splendidly goat-filled.

All the colors of anticipation

by June

Anticipation starts out pink...

blanches to a pearly blossom...

and then turns green.

Guess what color we can't wait to see?

Twin-twin: Grace Lin has a new book!

by June

Blossom and Fern are twins. Sometimes this is a deeply comforting fact. Sometimes it is very, very annoying. Whenever something eerie happens -- such as when they say something at the exact same moment -- they are as likely to sigh in exasperation as to marvel. "Twin-twin," they grumble.

Blossom and Fern at age five

When they were little, they went through a phase in which they only wanted to wear the same thing. Since I bought them different outfits (and they wore a lot of hand-me-downs), they sometimes had to improvise. Most memorably, they divided Blossom's red pair of shoes and Fern's green pair of shoes down the middle. They created matching pairs. Down the street they would go: red-foot, green-foot, red-foot, green-foot. Their puddle boots were the same: They each had a frog on one foot and a dinosaur on the other.

Back then, it was fun to be so much alike.

Because the girls attend a wonderful Chinese School, our family met the author Grace Lin when Blossom and Fern were five. The school's children were performing the world-premiere of The Ugly Vegetables as adapted for the stage. It was a terribly rainy Saturday, and we were Grace's escorts. She spent a lot of time in our soggy van.

We never forgot the thrill of having her show the school kids how to draw a giraffe. She read to them, and her applause was the warmest and most supportive in the room when the children were singing or making her book come to life. The thrill stayed with us.

And she remembered a little something too -- or two little someones. She later told us Blossom and Fern had helped inspire an early-reader book she was working on about twins; she was fascinated by how they each ate a cookie but in different ways. This past fall, she came to our Chinese School again -- and this time she brought the galleys of her soon-to-be-published book about twins. She presented the unbound, signed pages as a gift to "the original twins."

Fern and Blossom see the galleys for the first time

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!is more than one kind of gift to our twins (and all twins). Blossom and Fern now chafe at being considered the same, and yet it is so hard for them to tease apart in a "showy" way how they are different: They both like the same food, both adore caring for their chickens, both prefer math and science. But somehow perceptive Grace Lin was able to see right through all the similarities; she focused her creative brilliance on their differences. She wrote a whole book about all the ways twins can be different even as they love being always together.

Grace Lin is launching her gorgeous twin book on June 19 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you're in New England, it would be a fun day-trip. And if you and a friend dress alike, you'll get a special hand-made prize. Maybe you could mix-and-match your shoes with someone you love. That's very twin-twin.

The sweet life: Ants, ants, ants!

by June

Home, sweet home! Our home must be really sweet because we have ants everywhere — the walls, the windowsills, my sewing machine. I even had to flick one off my keyboard just now. (Do you think that could have anything to do with eating chocolate while I work?)

One place I truly welcome ants is on my peonies. Apparently it's just an old wives' tale that they eat the sugar off the buds, which allows the petals to slowly unfold into those lush, sweet blooms. But the ants do eat other bugs. Nature is beautifully in balance when the ants are on the peonies.

I can't resist a buxom, perfumed display of peonies on the table. But there's no doubt the peonies carry more ants into the house. Has anybody tried submerging the flowers in cold water for five minutes before arranging them in vases?

If a sweet life — filled with peonies — means ants, then more please!

For the love of dandelions

by June

Warning, warning to all delicate ears! I am about to utter something (apparently) shocking: I love dandelions.

I had no idea mine was a love that dare not speak its name. Then, I was invited to a barbecue in a neighborhood that prides itself on smooth grass lawns that cascade from every front porch down to the street — a street (I might add) that looks as if it is swept for the pleasure of the children who scoot around the cul-de-sac on their trikes and bikes. I didn't know many people at the gathering, so I was engaging in one of my favorite social activities; I was eavesdropping (or as little Fern used to call it "earsdropping").

A man with a beer says to his neighbor: "You know what I found in my lawn?"

The neighbor shakes his head. Uh-oh. He knows what's coming and doesn't even want to hear it.

"Yep," confirms the man with the beer, "A dandelion."

"Did you call The Guy?" the neighbor asked.

Oh, he called The Guy all right. I gathered that The Guy was responsible for the care of the lawns (which tells you how far I was from my comfort zone, a zone where I am responsible for nagging Birch to mow occasionally). I felt sorry for The Guy. He promised to get that filthy weed out of there and to redouble his chemical efforts to make sure another one didn't pop up its downy head anywhere near the cul-de-sac.

Really? Really? I mean, it's a sunny-bright flower that gives the bees something to buzz about long before the rest of the blossoms wake up to spring. Then it turns into a puffball — a puffball! — which happens to be one of the most amazingly engineered seed delivery systems on the planet and the best natural toy ever.

And the chickens look beautiful pecking insects on a stretch of new green tufted with yellow buttons.

Not to mention, dandelions are food! Food! Dandelions are one of the earliest greens after a long winter; they were prized by our grandparents who didn't have Whole Foods down the street. Just ask Laura Ingalls Wilder. Dandelions can be soup, salad, even wine.

The dandelion's long taproot digs way down, even into clay, breaking up the soil like a little tiller, and then it sucks those minerals up to the surface where other plants use them to thrive. I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that it's great to compost dandelion roots; all those beneficial minerals end up in your garden. (I'm assuming it had better be a hot compost or the roots might start growing again, but maybe one of the real gardeners around here will comment and make us all wiser.) And — I have this on the authority of my sweet daughter Blossom — you know that white milky stuff that oozes out of a dandelion stem? That stuff makes warts go away! Blossom has the wart-free big toe to prove it.

Okay, I understand that dandelions can get into places where a gardener doesn't want them. I have one under a rose bush that seems bigger than the rose bush. And the rose bush has thorns, and I have to go through the thorns to get to the dandelion. So the dandelion wins.

But I am not going to poison the thing. We live on a river we love, a river where our children float twig boats and paddle about in the deep pool. It's a river filled with trout. Great blue herons nest along it. Blossom and I once got very still in our shared innertube and watched a heron scoop a fish from the current and swallow it whole.

We do what we can to protect our river, and we know that anything we might spray on the dandelions is going to end up there.

We call it our river because we hear it at night when we're falling asleep and because we hike to its waterfalls with picnic lunches and because we float on the current and watch the birds. We call it ours, but really that river belongs to all of us — you and me and the children who aren't here with us yet. It's such a small, precious planet we share. These days, we're reminded of that in heartbreaking ways. The weather is weird. Oil gushes into the Gulf, threatening life and livelihoods far beyond where the leak is. Just last weekend, we gardened in the gloom of smoke from forest fires in Quebec -- a day's drive away.

We are all neighbors — me and you (wherever you are) and that man with the dreadful dandelion in his lawn. I wonder sometimes how it happened that we have transformed good things (like dandelions) into bad things that we combat with truly bad things (toxic chemicals) that in turn threaten other good things (the water we depend on for life itself).

Fern was riding in the car recently, watching the world go by. It was when spring was new and suddenly green. Some of the lawns had dandelions scattered merrily in the grass. Some didn't. "I miss the dandelions," she said as we swept through a manicured neighborhood. "It doesn't look natural."

It isn't natural. Dandelions are adapted to be wherever their seeds can drift. So maybe we all should let ourselves love them as we did when we were little: Pick a puffball, pucker up, blow. And if one of those little seeds drifts off and starts to grow in a place we just can't abide, let's promise one another, as neighbors, that we'll fight it with something just as natural as the plant itself. I hear boiling water works every time.

Savoring the harvest: Radishes two ways

by June

Radishes are supposedly the lickety-split vegetable, the seed you poke into the ground when you want to impress a child with the whole cycle -- seed to seedling to munch-munch. But the child in me and the children around me too are impatient for even the hastiest radish. We tend to eat radishes tiny and bead-like, at least early in gardening season.

This spring we are enjoying them two ways.

Cherry Belle radishes

The first is roasted. One rainy day, we were preparing a meal that was almost entirely from our garden: overwintered-leek-and-should-be-seed-potato soup sprinkled with watercress. We needed a little nibble to hold us, and we just happened to have harvested a handful of the most beautiful Cherry Belle radishes. So we lit a fire under a cast-iron skillet and whirled some olive oil around until it got hot. We sizzled the radishes (leaves and all) in the hot oil, then popped the entire skillet into a 400-degree oven. We roasted them for about eight minutes, topped them with a squeeze of lemon, a pat of butter, and a grind of pepper, then sea salt.

Cherry Belle radishes roasted

They were small as gumballs and still chewy and zingy in the middle. But the leaves -- oh, the leaves! -- were snappy and crackly. They were gone lickety-split!

French Breakfast radishes

Our other favorite radish preparation is either a French breakfast or a Midwestern farmer's lunch. We could happily eat it every meal of the day. We use French Breakfast radishes (again, on the small side), and we slice them into translucent little rounds. We butter some of Birch's daily bread, layer on the radish slices, then sprinkle with a lot, a lot, a lot of Malden's flaky sea salt.

French Breakfast radish sandwich

It is a feast on a hot day (such as today when the thermometer has hit 88 degrees, which is not cool by me -- in Maine, in May?). The radishes and salt look icy, but their crispness has a spicy-sour verve that gets gentled down by the sweet butter.

Who wouldn't be impatient for the radishes to grow when the eating is so delicious?

Welcome home!

by June

One minute, it's just Monday. Granted, it is better than most Mondays. It is full-blown spring. And Baby G is here to play. Then it becomes one of the best days of all, a day we dream about and plan year-round. Our chicks arrive. This year, they are six Rhode Island Reds.

Monday becomes enchanted.

Monday is a great day for falling in love.

The back-porch garden

by June

Spring has released us out into the sunshine. It's the season for supper on the back porch. And since we're lazy sorts, we've planted good nibbles right here. What wonderful synchronicity that the most delicious greens sprout early and come on strong in the cool weather, just when we are happiest to soak in the sunlight that pools near our back door as day goes down.

The garden planter closest to the kitchen almost made it through the winter with buoyant mache and arugula and spinach. Those greens all but glowed in contrast to the snow and the dead-stick honeysuckle toughing it out nearby. But then a two-below wind ripped the greenhouse plastic off one night and...whoosh! Just like that, everything was freeze-dried. Lucky for us, the spinach merely hunkered down for spring, and the mache too came back as soon as the weather warmed. I had underplanted everything with more mache and arugula seeds. Those germinated in February.

By March, I was able to plant more seeds in the empty planters I had prepped in the fall with fresh compost. They are now providing us with lettuces like Tom Thumb and Lollo Rosso and Forellenschluss, as well as Wrinkled Crinkled Curly Cress. Radishes are plumping up. (Why is it that radishes are supposedly the fastest vegetable, but when you're waiting for them, it takes a lot of waiting?) The Melting Mammoth peas are twining up the twig supports.

From out here on the porch, we have a view of the chickens pecking in the shiny new grass and the leaves unfolding on the trees. The birds sing, and we grow still, listening for the cardinals, the swallows, the orioles. Ducks fly over on the way to the river. When the pizza oven is burning, we can watch the fire.

Most of all, we can see up close the miraculous stirrings among the plants: Peas reach for a place to grow. Lettuce bundles up into tight mounds. A garlic chive seed sprouts a little thread that does a kind of yoga on its way to straightening up.

Here's what I savor most as my children tend the seedlings and sniff the cilantro and sneak a curly cress leaf (or three), I savor knowing that it's all right here in the middle of our lives: growing our food, preparing it, sharing it with one another. It's the slowest food imaginable, and it slows us down to enjoy life. It's so local it's intimate. Like our back-porch garden planters, our food is right here in the center of our lives.

If you were a girl who really really really wanted a goat...

by June

If you were a girl (or two) who really really really wanted a goat (or two), you would start a little business selling eggs. You would go out twice a day -- rain, snow, or shine -- and you would pamper your hens because happy hens lay lots of eggs.

You would call your business Daisy Family Eggs, and you would make little labels for the egg cartons. You would ask all your friends if they wanted to donate to your cause in exchange for farm-fresh eggs from happy hens.

You would faithfully collect the eggs from the nesting boxes and wash them -- even when they were extremely poop-covered. When you squabbled with your sister about who had to wash the most poop-covered eggs, you would sit down and write out an egg-washing policy that involved flipping a coin to see who got to choose the first four eggs, then alternating every four eggs after that and keeping track from day to day. Happy hens must have happy keepers.

You would track how many eggs went out and how much money came in using a ledger designed especially for you by your grandfather. You would open all Valentine cards with one eager thought: How much can I add to the goat fund? When you were doing your history lesson, you would hear about the Virginia Company and that would make you ask questions about stocks, and you would find out about something called the stock market. You would insist upon trying the stock market out for yourself and would invest birthday money from last year. You would do research and choose your own penny stocks based on things you like (Google and Apple computers), and you would watch your stocks tick up and down and up and down. You would cheer when it was up. You would pout when it was down.

You would count your money often. You would balance your ledger carefully. You would check out the Nigerian dwarf goat farms online that were showing off their newborn goats. You would ask your mama, Is this farm close to us? Is this one?

You would get your daddy to stop by one of the farms. You would meet two baby does there. You would fall in love. The next day, you would go back with a one-hundred-dollar bill as a deposit for those twin baby goats. You would name them Buttercup and Clover. You would hold them and smile and wish you could take them home right that minute.

You would. And you did.

In June, Buttercup and Clover will be coming home to live with two girls who really really really wanted a goat (or two).