Surprise!

 Any experienced gardener around here knows that you can't trust a warm and sunny February to remain that way.  After many flowers were starting to open up early we were hit with a 3-Year Low Temperature of 24 degrees, including a brief sort of snow-hail the afternoon of February 22nd!

A video of the soft hail (like little pea-sized snowballs) at the nursery:

Sage, one of the two nursery cats, waits patiently for entry to the greenhouse:

Charlotte and I have been focusing on nutrition lately.  We've been getting especially excited for these new bean varieties and recipes we have been trying out from an heirloom bean seller that is headquartered right here in Napa, Rancho Gordo Beans.  Charlotte got me their cookbook as a gift last year.  I have infinite respect for the bean as a cornerstone of nutrition.  They really are a gift, and they make my body feel like it is functioning at optimum power, and they're delicious!

"Ayocote morado" aka purple runner beans cooked and cooled and dressed up with shaved carrot, radish, cilantro, pumpkin seeds and I-forget-what-else-but-it-was-amaaazing!  The beans had a rich meaty flavor.  I drank the excess broth, which was like an incredible hearty beef broth.

"Royal Corona" beans were the size of my thumb, just about!  We cooked these a bit longer and then marinated them in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, etc.  Creamy and rich, these were a delightful and filling snack or meal!

"King City Pink" beans are touted for their use as a basic pot bean, creating excellent broth.  Supposedly they "helped put King City on the map" and were a very popular variety from the 1930's through to the end of WWII.  John Steinbeck even mentions them in Tortilla Flat!  We made these with just the basic treatment, cooked in a pot with carrot, onion, garlic, and celery - perfection.

"Finally, she called Danny's friends into her kitchen and explained that it was beans that they needed. The fire of their passion renewed, that night, four shadowy figures snuck past the sleeping guard and into the Western Warehouse Company. They emerged shortly afterwards struggling through the shadows under the tremendous weight of four one hundred pound sacks of pink beans.” -from Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Another fun culinary treat was cooking this rainbow trout that my mom's partner, Mark, caught at San Pablo Dam.  He gutted and scaled it.  But this was my first experience cutting a fresh fish.  I removed the head and tail and did my best to evenly splay it open in two halves so that the vertebrae would mostly come out easy.  Charlotte made her great roasted carrots as a side.

Around two and a half pounds.

View from beneath the Pyrex.  We dressed it up with lemon and orange slices, rosemary, sage, and garlic.  It turned out great with a nice citrus flavor.

It is March 7th now, and the weather has warmed back up again.  Some plants sustained some damage in the freeze, but I don't think we had many plant losses at the house.  It has been interesting observing various plants' responses to such a shift in temperature, going from 70's to 20's, there were a lot of aborted flowers, and some borderline-deciduous plants that looked like they might make it through winter without shedding their leaves had to change their plans.  But I am happy to know that most of our garden could handle it just fine.

Here is one winter bloomer that I have really enjoyed since planting it as a little 4-inch pot that was getting thrown away at work, probably around my first year at the job.  I planted four, initially, and two didn't make it, but our two remaining specimens are as tall as me now!  Black Sage (Salvia mellifera) is, apparently, California's most common sage (I am surprised to read that just now), inhabiting the Southern coast of the state and providing food for hummingbirds and bees, as well as quail and other birds that eat its seeds.  It is a wonderfully handsome shrub, with an interesting and eye-pleasing branching structure.  And it is one of our first flowers of the season!

Salvia mellifera

That's all for now!