Spring is springing

OK let's get this over with quickly. Mandatory cute animal picture for today. Hold onto your hats :

I think Rosie was surprised to see me. In order to be able to take this picture, I had to kind of jump out at them from around the doorframe. Loki looks nonplussed.

So spring is finally springing, I do believe. Things are melting, the dog poo is in full bloom, and my seedlings are growing up into leggy little tomatoes and peppers. Pretty soon I will have to find a dog-proof (ha!) spot in front of a southern window for my little greenhouse, and move the tomatoes and peppers to the grown-up table. Next up at the kiddie table are melons and squash, which need 4 to 6 weeks before last frost, and I'm going to tempt fate by starting them April 6. Maybe I should wait oooone more weekend. I have the garden all planned out already and yes, it's ambitious, and yes, it will probably not work out and be infested by cucumber beetles and cilantro and weeds and probably I will forget to water it or mulch properly, and I will get earwigs in my peppers and my tomatoes will be late, but what the heck. I amuse myself.

I want to find a good book on survival, or 'wild', food from my area. I would like to do at least one meal using the ingredients found in our yard. I would call it the 100-metre diet. Thing is, within 100 metres of my house, I have the following native delicacies:

- burdock (ha! lots of it)

- mushrooms (in fall)

- wild ginger (I promise not to take much of it)

- dandelions (meh)

- birch trees (I am interested in making flour out of the bark, for some odd reason)

- miscellaneous edible flowers

- black raspberries

- red raspberries

- wild strawberries

- fiddleheads (spring only)

- venison (ha ha ha)

- sumac berries

- nettles

...and I'm sure there are more things that I'm forgetting. Perhaps I could serve venison with a sauce of wild ginger, sumac berries, and mushrooms, garnished with edible flowers, served with burdock and steamed nettles on the side, paired with a lovely dandelion wine.

Sounds like a lot of work.

Can you milk deer? ("I got nipples Focker, can you milk me?") I could then conceivably make deer cheese. That should have been the title of this post.