It is really spring. Last weekend we had summer and worked in the garden dressed in bikinis. This weekend the wind had a touch of Arctic - ice cold. All clothes on but a magic sun waking up trees and flowers. And unfortunately also - the weeds.
This is about my favourite weed - nettles. I can see they are ready for harvest this week. A few weeks earlier than last year.
And the nettles - where did they enter the scene?
The best part of the gardening today was the germinating nettles I found at the west façade of the barn. With rubber gloves on I harvested the sprouts, cooked them, chopped them and prepared them like spinach cooked in white full fat cream sauce.
But the taste is far from spinach. Swedish nettles are a real delicacy. A taste of it’s own - a touch of wood, meadows, mushrooms and summer. I promise you that if you overcome the initial resistance of eating nettles - you will never regret it. It must be experienced - it cannot be explained! And it´s addictive. Really addictive!
On top of this great meal I have a new way to interpret this metaphor: "grasp the nettle".
It actually means "to take action immediately in order to deal with an unpleasant situation".
Somewhere I read this idiom comes from the fact that you can handle nettles in a way where you can avoid getting stung - by striking the "hair" in the right direction. This is definitely not true when it comes to Swedish nettles. They sting all the time. No matter how you threat them.
So I prefer my own interpretation. To handle something sticky & hard and get something good out of it. To turn something boring to something filled with joy. And perhaps even to turn something painful into something good. Just like when eating nettles.
This was supposed to be an aprichot tree. Now the wildplum root has taken over. The first frost took all apricot branches.
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