3-52-2014: Buttermilk Biscuits and Botany

January 19, 2014 – It’s soup Sunday at our place, and that means dinner of soup of some sort, and some accompanying bread. Tonight the combination was Mulligatawny soup and buttermilk biscuits. I was going to bake buttermilk bread, but didn’t get home with enough time left to make a yeast leavened bread, so buttermilk biscuits it was. Rolled out with my Grandmother’s rolling pin for good measure.

We were late getting home because we spent a lot of time today contemplating appliances for the new kitchen that is to come, and at the end of the day, the decision was made and the deposit paid. First step over. We can’t wait to have a new kitchen, but we are making do with the present one for the time being.

A magnolia tree at the UBC Botanical Gardens

We were also out and about poking through a couple of nurseries. When we sold the condo, we also sold a mature garden with it. I’d spent the past 19 years collecting plants, many of them relatively uncommon at nurseries. I’d picked up so many wonderful treasures at plant sales at the UBC Botanical Gardens, Van Dusen Gardens, and various out of the way small nurseries from the Sunshine Coast to the Fraser Valley. All of those treasures stayed at the condo because when we sold most everything was dormant and I wouldn’t be able to find them without a bit poking above the soil.

Some I just knew wouldn’t transplant, like the trilliums. They had matured and come up beautifully every spring, but they are also well and happily ensconced within the roots of the Japanese White Pine. So they had to stay put. In the end all I took were the things already in pots.

When we started looking for a new home I’d said I didn’t want anything with much ‘dirt’. I didn’t much care about a yard to take look after, I didn’t want to be a slave to whatever place we bought.

But then we landed here. In a place with a real yard, with mature trees, and more outdoor space than I ever thought we own in proximity to Vancouver.

At first I just stared at it, overwhelmed. And I’m still a bit in that camp. But I’m also getting excited at the possibilities. And I am kind of excited about the fun of the hunt for those treasures again. This is the kind of yard where there will always be space for one more little treasure. And that’s pretty cool.

I do miss a lot of my botanical treasures already, there were things that usually started to poke their noses out of the soil already. Like my Hepatica nobilis plants, and my Hacquetia eipactus. They will already be showing a little bit of green by now. I hope I can find some of those again someday. Something to look forward to I suppose.

Even though I was potting a few patio trees yesterday, and even though I planted a few beautiful Hellebores, and potted up some daffodils, it IS only January and there is still a lot of winter to potentially come.

So until things start growing a bit more, and until all the nurseries are open again, and until their stock builds up, we will plan and dream and look forward to the hunt.

And I will find things other than the garden to occupy me, like baking buttermilk biscuits. 🙂