The last week of January has been a good one. The coat of slick ice in the backyard is slowly melting. Chip, our old dog with sensitive feet, gets carried to the small patches of grass every time he goes out. He shivers and whimpers miserably, but wouldn't tolerate us putting boots on his feet. The babe and I went to the arboretum yesterday, on a sunny winter day, and were surprised to see that all of the perennial "pollinator gardens" have been torn out, leveled into a construction site in the process of making a better pollinator area which will attract "all of the region's native pollinators". A lofty goal and a worthy cause, but still, it is hard to see gardens reduced to nothing. I wonder what they did with the perennials - goldenrod, bee balm, and wild sunflower-like plants that rose 8 feet tall. It was a fantastic place in the height of Summer - I always imagined how many insects were moving around me when I stood there.
The gardens were pretty barren, cut down and cleaned up, waiting for Spring. Compared with my gardens, where I let most of the stalks and leaves remain until Spring (critter habitat), this was almost eerily bare. We did find a lot of Praying Mantis egg cases (about a dozen) and the glass house was open, where they have wonderful displays about nature and small activities for kids. It is a really nice (warm!) place to visit on a sunny Winter weekday - we had the place to ourselves.
I will leave you with two pictures from the homestead - homemade soft pretzels and January's harvest of parsnips. I made the pretzels the right way this time, boiling them first in water and baking soda, and they got really good. However, the thing about soft pretzels is that they are really only good first out of the oven, so partaking in a carb overload is required.