Happy things and not

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Y’all, I have just discovered that the flowering shamrocks I planted in honor of Oliver are coming up. As I planted 100 of them and was starting to feel concerned that all were lemon bulbs, I’m thrilled to see that there will be fruit from my labor.

Also, there is a darling nest in one of the camellia trees back by our garage. I often see a bird whooshing out of it but wasn’t sure if there were eggs in it or not as I am not tall enough to see in. Well, the deck foreman is tall enough, and he just told me there were two eggs. Gently and cautiously, I tipped the branch and peeked in and one of the eggs has hatched and is a darling baby bird.

This makes me so happy because I am feeling like our back yard is becoming a haven for birds, worms, roly-polys and other little friends who are finding at 4416 a chemical-free, verdant little home. Y’all, am I going to become a hippie version of Ouiser from Steel Magnolias?

This is all such lovely news and counteracts, to some degree, the blinding migraine I have and the random tornado warnings that abound around here (and have really mauled parts of the country in the past couple days- wow!). If you have never had a migraine, feel blessed. If you have, you have my every sympathy as they are the worst.

The fava bean burgers all done up. Ok, I am not a good fryer but I tried. At the end, however, I

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The fava bean burgers all done up. Ok, I am not a good fryer but I tried. At the end, however, I thought griddling them was more effective. I did put some Meyer lemon slices in during the frying period, and those were fabulous. Yotam gives us a lovely, healthful recipe here, but it is lacking in seasoning in my opinion. If you make these, you MUST add a lot of lemon zest, lemon juice, fresh mint and some crushed red pepper, and you must then finish it all off with a generous sprinkle of Maldon. The ones I made like that were quite good.

I served these with pita and a Greek yogurt-lemon-mint-red pepper sauce. We enjoyed the Hall Sauvignon Blanc as well; it’s a nice CA riff on more minerally Sauv Blancs that you would find in France or NZ- still has a solid acidity but is less austere and stern than those.