Today's mail brought a veritable avalanche of gardening catalogs - does this mean that spring is on its way? To look outside, one might even think that spring is already here. The sky is a clear, crisp blue and there is not a trace of snow or ice anywhere. Take a step outside, though, and winter reminds of its presence with a grip of cold, stark, arctic air. Still, the catalogs must be an omen of something so I took a few minutes to think about what I might want to plant and/or can this year.


Since last year was just so awful for gardening I'm going to cut my expenditures by about two-thirds and spend more of the budget that is left on, well, dirt. My husband has agreed to built several 4 X 8 raised beds for placement next to the back pario that will have to be filled and I've already been sheet composting on the one bed that the house's previous owners established. I'm going to attempt to stick to three kinds of tomatoes (Sungolds), a paste (most likely Amish Paste) and another variety for slicing. I also want to do several common kitchen herbs (rosemary, a basil or two, a mint or two, cilantro and maybe even some lavender if I'm feeling ambitious), tomatillos, a hot pepper or two, radishes, mesclun, and maybe, just maybe a squash or two. Oh, and the sunflowers requested by the Boy Wonder. My long term gardening hopes are a lot more involved than this, but until I'm able to organize an effective deer/rabbit/squirrel deterrant system I'm going to have to be a little more restrained.


Since the garden area will be fairly compact I'm hoping to get away with a relatively shortish (4 feet) chicken wire fence (sunk into the ground about half a foot and angled out from the base) combined with alternating pepper/soap and garlic/egg sprays. We'll see how this works.


If all goes well, I'll be able to can salsa and tomatoes from home grown produce. For the rest I'll have to visit farm stands. I've opened my last jar of cherry sauce and, although I have lots of strawberry sauce left from last summer's failed jam, I will probably make more come June. I'll also need to do more dilly beans and eggplant relish, not to mention blueberry sauce and jam and raspberry jam. I've been curious about pie fillings, too, even though I don't make much in the way of pie. Then there are pickles of various kinds to consider as well.


And nothing on this list takes into account the pressure canner I'm hoping to buy. It would be great to be able to do spaghetti sauce, chili, soups, or plain veggies like green beans.


For now, though, I'll have to content myself with my newly arrived catalogs and some dreams.

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It's another one of those "hot bunk" nights. We have borrowed this term from the military services - basically, it means the situation wherein two (or more) personnel share a single bed. One works while the other sleeps and when shift change rolls around, they reserse positions. Essentially, the bed is always "hot" as in, the sheets are never cool. More and more this is how we operate around here and the husband openly wondered the other day why we invested in a queen size bed at all, when clearly a twin would have covered the ground for us. Tonight, he came to bed well after midnight and I arrived downstairs around 2:30 to see that he had been working on taxes. I'll probably head back up around six to sleep for a few as he's getting up to prepare for his 8 a.m. departure. Damned insomnia. The least our systems could do would be to let us be awake every now again on the same schedule.


Tonight I'm thinking that my awakeness is connected to a rather difficult day at work of which I'm having trouble letting go. I participated in a very tense, unsatisfactory conference call with two other contractors on the project I'm trying very hard to wrap up. One of them is completely on board, gets what I'm saying and, since she is on site at the client's offices, is totally invested in being on time and on budget. The other keeps blocking progress, trying to upsell the client on some sexy new "solution" for handling the work for which we've been engaged. The thing is, this sexiness comes at a cost - both in terms of money and time - and, frankly, isn't really necessary for any other reason than to enrich the man proposing the work. You know, I'm fine with that angle, really - its common for consultants to try and upsell client and we all know the drill. But his insistence on testing all kinds of coding and scripts and whatnot is keeping all of us from achieving RIGHT NOW AT THE MOMENT what we're all trying to do. Plus I have the added dread that he could single handedly unravel what I've spent the last 14 months accomplishing at a time when I'm no longer around to fix the damage or stop him from inflicting it in the first place. So he continues navel gazing and is refusing just to get down to business and handle the work at, well, hand. Very frustrating.


So frustrating, in fact, that making cookies with my toddler was a downright serene activitity, flour clouds, spilled vanilla and all. We had such a good time and he so enjoyed eating "his" cookies that we're going to try making a cake this weekend. The new baby has been thoughtful enough to procure "real," child-sized baking gear for her big brother to take the sting out of her arrival. It's all little stuff, but the pans - there's a round cake tin, a loaf pan, a cookie sheet and a pie plate - can go in the oven and the set came with a short recipe book with quantities suited to the diminutive size of the equipment. He may not always enjoy the idea of spending time with me in the kitchen or be interested in the process of cooking but, while he is, I want to make the space as welcoming as possible.


Who knows? Maybe he'll be my canning partner this year. Hmm...I'll have to make him a little apron. Jam making can get awfully messy.

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My husband is TAing a course in tissue engineering this semester to a group consisting primarily of undergrads and yesterday was the first day of class. Over dinner I asked him how it went and, in the course of his telling, I realized that I was hearing a lot of first names typically associated with women - Karen, Kristen, Lisa, etc. I asked him how many women are in the class and said he didn't know, but there were "a lot." He pointed out, though, that there were always a number of women - approaching 50% in most cases - in his biomedical engineering masters-level classes, so he wasn't at all shocked to find a similar number among his students. I found this both surprising and pleasing.


Allow me to explain. He and I both spent our bachelors and masters years at Drexel University in Philadelphia, a school with a good regional reputation for (among other things) providing a solid education in engingeering and the hard sciences. Historically, the ratio of male to female undergraduate students was some crazy thing like 4:1. Lately that ratio has been leveling out (many of my college girlfriends are engineers), but there is still this holdover that somehow there may be only 2 or 3 women in a freshman design class of 30 students.


So I wondered how it came to pass that there were so many women involved with and achieving in biomedical engineering with all its byzantine subsets and arcane research areas. At then it hit me - this field is really quite new and does not have the "male club" pedigree of other engineering fields like mechanical, electrical or chemical that have been around, in some form or another, since the industrial revolution. Those fields came about and were shaped in a time when most women didn't have a prayer of going to college, let alone developing a long-term career path (of course, we all know of exceptions) and so when women began to push their boundaries into engineering they found a hidebound system of education, apprenticeship and hierarchy that wasn't terribly welcoming to them.


Biomedical engineering, though, only really started evolving into a discrete field in the early 80s (around the time that many of my husband's students were born). It hasn't had nearly the time to develop the same boys' club tradition and so, perhaps, has proven to be an attractive option for young women interested in flexing their science, math and logic skills in an engineering field. I mean, why bang your head against the wall trying to be heard as a, say, mechanical engineer, when the biomedical field is wide open?


This is just my pet theory, of course, and it is one that deserves more scrutiny.

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This is one of our deer friends. This fellow came for dinner in the back yard and merely looked up when he heard the door open. Just after the pic was taken (hesitate to use the word "shot") he gave the deer equivilent of a shrug and resumed his meal. He and his family are clearly more interested in our foliage than us - much to the enduring detriment to our garden. Another planting season is coming, though, and he'd better be ready for a much more aggressive game on my part than last year. I will have vegetables, damn it. I will.


I had two amusing interactions today with adults younger than myself. I find myself in an interesting position these days having recently turned 35 and coming to understand that while am not "old" I am really no longer a "young woman," either. My young cousins see me as impossibly grown up what with having a mortgage and all, while my older aunts and uncles don't quite understand how I came to have kid(s) of my own. Sort of between the kids table and the grown-ups table, you know?


Anyway, I went to buy a new CD-RW today at a well known national office supplies store. The young woman checking me out asked me when my due date was and, upon hearing that it's so close, was astonished that "they're making you go out and buy this stuff!" Who's making me go out? My boss, of course! I sort of giggled and responded that I am the boss and that I was just trying to make efficient use of the day. Her eyes got wide and she responded, "Cool! It would be great to be in charge of something for once." I told her that she could be, if she really wanted to and got lucky as well. She smiled as I left. Is it very egotistical for me to hope that I gave her something to think about?


The other episode followed shortly thereafter when I stopped by the bank to sign some papers. The young rep serving me looked to be about 24 or so - certainly not long out of college. As I was reading the fine print, the baby did an in utero gymnastics move. I scacely noticed but I looked up to ask a question and saw him regarding me with the same horror that one might reserve for, say, the first Alien movie. "What's the matter," I asked. "Your stomach! It moved!"


It only took me a minute to reassure him that it's all perfectly normal and, actually, quite nice. Babies aren't static creatures - they move and squirm even before they're born, I told him. "Wow," he said, "I had no idea. It doesn't hurt?" I had to fight a kind of maternal instinct to invite him to put a hand on my belly to feel the next kick, as I do with my son. Luckily, common sense prevailed and I refrained.


I'd like to think that these exchanges will remain in the memories of those who participated with me. I recognize it's possible, though, that the universe arranged these for me as a reminder that my life - as mundane and workaday as it seems to me most of the time - is really quite good and full of mystery and surprise. I'd do well to remember that more often.

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We did not get as much done over the weekend as we should have. Yesterday seemed very strange - none of us here in the house were really in the best of moods and, while we didn't exactly clash, we weren't really clicking with each other either. So a lot of our energy went toward just sort of being around each other rather than working together all in the same direction, you know? I'm hoping that we can get back on track tonight. We'll see what happens. I fear that my scattered and distracted mood is driving this little breakdown - my husband, God love him, is a saint but I know that he is wearying of the vicissitudes of my pregnancy (probably as much or more than I am), plus the new semester starts this week and he is mentally gearing up for a significant amount of work since he is also TAing. Add in one toddler who is suddenly realizing as the nursery takes shape that something very odd is going on here and you've got one keyed up household.


I did manage to put two more casseroles in the freezer against the post-partum crazies. One was a pheasant and wild rice dish (made with chicken, since I did not have any pheasant handy) originally made for my by the mother of my college friend and roommate Lindsay. Lindsay and I are only in sporadic touch these days but I keep a psychic connection to her and our shared past by making this tasty, creamy concoction. The other item placed into the freezer was the much-lauded Bigos.


I promised a recipe and am happy to supply it (I've been told that every Polish family has their own, heirloom recipe which it is loathe to share - since I am not Polish but merely married to a man of Polish ancestry I do not consider myself bound by this tradition). There's one thing you must understand: Bigos looks awful. I mean, really awful. But it's delicious and, if you're lucky, your friends and family will refuse to eat it on the basis of its looks and then you won't have to share. With that out of the way, here goes: Dice and cook up about a pound of bacon (yes, you heard me). When it starts to give up its fat, throw in two diced onions and about half a pound of dice mushrooms (regular button mushrooms are fine). Cook this all up unti the bacon is nicely done, the onions are translucent and the mushrooms have given off some liquid. Add about a pound of previously cooked roast beef, in about a half inch dice. Let this warm up and stew a bit. Next, add about a pound of kielbasa or uncured polish sausage (if you can get it, the real kind is nicer, but supermarket brands will do), again diced up. Allow this to warm and stew a bit. Basically, you want a bit of time in between adding the meats and other ingredients to allow them to both impart and absorb flavors. Next, pour in a cup of a nice, hearty, non-sweet red wine and cook down over medium heat. Once the wine has cooked down a bit and blended with the meat and mushroom juices, add three cups shredded cabbage and a large can of sauerkraut. Mix well with the meats and cook until you can no longer really tell the difference between the fresh cabbage and the kraut. You can eat it that same day, but it really tastes better the next day after reheating.


That's it. Some people add a diced apple, others throw in tomatoes. You can do so if you like. The recipe is really forgiving - if you have more roast and less bacon, fine. If you have venison to put in, fine. Like more onions, fine. Whatever. The only constants as far as I can see are the bacon, saurkraut, cabbage and sausage. It's very filling, very warming and is just the thing to eat in front of a fire. Even better to throw some hot into a thermos and have it outside by a fire. For just a few minutes, you'll forget that you're cold.

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