nothing illegal in the winkelwagen

Researching and finding vendors for obscure vegetable seeds has become a real obsession for me, and I think it stems directly from the absolutely apocalyptically just fucking god-awful weather in New York.  It's snowing today.  SNOWING.  It is spring, it's practically APRIL, nothing is green, there's still glacier-like snowpack in the shadows and the snow is still coming down.  Fucking hell.  I think the seeds are like a little promise of warm weather ahead, and I need all kinds of reassurance at this point.

I've placed an unnecessary and excessive order with the crazy-awesome Dutch seed house Vreeken's Zaden, which I'm hoping a friend in Holland will send on to me although neither of us is sure about the regulations involved with shipping seed internationally.  Here's hoping customs doesn't confiscate my black Spanish carrots, Indian eggplants and Australian Jarrahdale squash (an historically true-to-type yellow-fleshed strain, SCORE!).  I did order weed seeds, but not the weed anyone is expecting -- Scandix pectin-veneris is a tasty chervil-like umbellifer and is almost certainly classified as an invasive in the States.  But so are dandelions which are one of the most nutritious and useful species on the planet and a great example of why officially categorizing plants as weeds is just stupid.  I didn't put any cannabis in my cart so I'm hoping we're good.

Tristan and I are in the middle of a two-day paste paper and book-making class at the Art School of Columbia County.  I love this place, in part because they're so welcoming to Tristan even though the classes are generally for adults.  The fantastic teacher, Beth, sent us home with all the extra paint for making paste paper so we'll be painting up a storm for the next few days.  Everyone can expect handmade books for Christmas.

Tristan's books are amazing, the wrinkles and smudges are mine.

Dispirit didn't suck.  And I appreciate that SF's Blue Bottle has set up shop in NYC so that I can actually enjoy a coffee when I wake up away from home, but I don't appreciate that it's yet another example of the many things that are better on the west coast.  I sure wish New York would warm up enough to stop me thinking that I've made a huge mistake.