well, i completely forgot to post the above yesterday, what i made with the false morels. creamy spaghetti sauce, of course... it was delicious! the gluten-free pasta gets its golden colour from turmeric, which i seem to be putting everywhere nowadays. porridge, yoghurt, sweet and savoury things, tea, you name it. cinnamon and black pepper are never far behind. i love spicy food, but lately i've been making a lot of japanese style dishes also, with minimal seasoning that bring out the flavour of the fresh ingredients. guess spring will do that.
speaking of spring, it has been doing its magic in the garden. i especially like these fritillarias that are slightly lighter in colour than the rest. i planted loads of white and patterned ones a few years ago, because i was told they would deter voles (they do not...) but also because they are really beautiful and easy. the white ones are down to two, and i think i know why because both of them are all but eaten already. i wanted lots of them, with just a few purple, checkered flowers thrown in for interest, but things don't always go as planned.
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| primula veris |
this red cowslip is a mystery to me. it just kind of appeared one year, and i don't know if it came as a seed from some neighbour's yard or if it mutated from the regular, yellow one that we have. that one is growing clinging to the side of the flowerbed, like it might have once been planted on purpose, but it could also just be a wild specimen. no one has confessed to transplanting them, yet. i've been dividing the red one and it seems to produce red offspring from seed, too. quite lovely, especially since this is a protected species native to the area but i've never actually seen it in the wild.
this white beauty is another mystery, even though i probably have sown it from seed myself. it's a small plant with very fragrant flowers, and i just spotted it growing on the stone wall. it's neither of the two white flowers that i've tried to get to grow there, unless i've had the wrong seeds. so far no luck with finding out what this is. anyone? any guesses even?
[edit: thanks to hilja, we now have a name for the plant, it's a rockcress, arabis sp. welcome to the garden, pitkäpalko, wherever you came from!]
i've been studying japanese on my own, off and on, for a few years now, thinking i could never learn, but all of a sudden it seems i've got quite a few useful sentences down. i even learned the numbers from one to ten, which was the hardest thing for so very long. i couldn't even get past two. then within one week i got to three, and in threes up to ten, and then backwards to zero, even. learning, remembering, it can be funny sometimes.
i've been avoiding the rest of the number stuff, because japanese has insanely difficult grammar for the amounts and order of different things, not to mention how numbers are put together. it really drives me nuts, but whenever i get mad at the japanese for making it so complicated, i have to admit that my own native tongue isn't exactly in the easy to master category, either. and japanese has a lot in common with finnish, even though they aren't that closely related. i suppose in time i can learn it more and more.
for now my method is to memorize phrases and sentences that have personal meaning, everyday talk with the rat, for example. they are easier to remember, and for me it's a good base to build and reflect upon. it's a dream of mine to live in japan for at least one year, to travel across the islands and just take it all in. before that i want to have a basic grasp of the language, though. and my hiragana could be a lot better. my local library might have some children's books in japanese, that could be a sort of organic way to learn. and i should get back with the habit of transcribing my japanese magazines.
the trouble is, there's so much i want to do that i still just get frozen in the sea of possibilities. for twenty-five years at least i've tried and triend, and have very little to show for all the energy i've wasted. i constantly watch people have ideas, try and fail, yet produce amazing things, while i keep on thinking about maybe doing something some day. at times i swear i will let go of even trying, but the anxiety always remains. something in my brain just won't switch on and let me function properly, which frustrates me to no end. being a perfectionist, being too hard on myself, is only a fraction of the problem when i can't even keep up with washing the dishes because i'm too tired and confused from all the frantic thinking that my brain constantly churns out on me.
i suppose nothing but flowers would've been the witty choice here, but i really feel more like this:
