“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious...

The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.  ~Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

I just spent the morning putting up some Beet Root Relish. RELISH, my dearest darling son*, R E L I SH!  It looks to be, as I said to my dearest darling husband, full of passion, nourishment, and magic (just like our marriage.) I can hardly wait to taste it. But am considering building the drama of the moment, the vegetable, and the love to culminate with a feast of Saint Valentine. 

Valentines are on my mind. The light is returning to our hemisphere. Spring will begin in our corner of the world sooner rather than later, though it will come indecisive, tentative, waltzing hopefully with slow sopping feet. Yet, for us, its not too soon to get excited. Best to wait for the moment of arrival, the birth of actual spring, with thoughts of love. A new take on the red and green of winter, blood and chlorophyll share the same chemical structure save for their inner most molecule, iron for the first and magnesium for the second. Our blood and the ocean strive for the same homeostasis of salt. I'm thinking of blood and love waiting on spring, knitting, fermenting, hoping, praying, lasting, and stirring; gathering the elements of sap, rooting, sucking minerals, energized, anticipation, alchemy, fruition, cloves and stars, spiced.

 Trying to come up with the perfect neck cozy, a scarf that can never fall. Rill helps in her way.

*thanks to my son for the EXCELLENT action kitten shots