What?! More snow?! No! We want flowers in the house!

Here's today's forecast for Minneapolis, courtesy the National Weather Service:

"Snow likely before 1pm, then a chance of light snow between 1pm and 2pm, then snow with patchy blowing snow after 2pm."

Can you use "snow" four times in one sentence? That's on top of the 7 or 8 inches already sitting on the ground. You might notice how white it looks through those windows.

Ah, but I see from visiting Jane's flower party, that I'm not the only one with shoveling rather than gardening on my day's agenda. Actually, I expect gardening won't be one of my tasks for several more weeks, but that's pretty standard around here. All the more reason for flowers in the house.

If you're new to flowers in the house, you really must click the link on "flower party" above and have a look at all the lovely blogs featuring flowers today, thanks to Flower Jane and her Small but Charming blog. Thank you, Jane, for continuing this cheerful monthly tradition. Come to think of it, I have nothing to complain about.

And, fortunately, somebody knows how to grow flowers at this time of year around here, because when I went to the co-op, I was pleased to not only find a rather decent selection of flowers, but a sign indicating that they are locally grown. (Well, not outdoors, obviously.) So I selected some cheery orange tulips and a bundle labeled "filler." I chose a filler bouquet with a bit of violet purple in it to complement the orange.

I feel better already.

And it looks like the big meltdown begins on the weekend, with temps in the high 30s.

Cheers!

Tres on a balmy day last summer

And as you can see, I'm not the only one dreaming of spring! (Did someone invite cats to the party? Oh, yeah; they invite themselves.)

Cabbages and eggs, again

Boiled eggs, chopped red cabbage, turmeric, & vinegar

I wasn't going to color Easter eggs this year, what with Nora away and me not into doing the whole Easter Bunny thing anymore. Last year I announced to our two adult children that the Easter Bunny had retired, but if they wanted to hide eggs for each other, they should feel free to go right ahead and do so.

Here the eggs are inside the bowls

But I still enjoy coloring eggs, especially since I started playing around with food-based natural coloring agents a few years ago. It kind of seems more magical to me, to make your own dyes from foods and spices; or maybe it's just more appealing and kind of a novelty. It always makes me want to experiment with dyeing other things, like linen bookbinding thread (which I've done) and paper (which I've also done, but only with tea and rust—but not together; that is, I have used them together and it just turned the paper gray, so now i know better).

It's the one time each year that I buy white eggs. All the rest of the year I buy brown eggs. Either way, they're organic, free-range eggs from the co-op, but most of the time the brown eggs just appeal to me more. But I don't expect they would color up very well, would they?

To keep things simple this year, I just did two colors, with three eggs of each. I boiled up seven eggs Friday morning, and ate one of them for breakfast (taking it out of the water after only three minutes so the yolk would be soft), and let the others sit until I had finished my tea.

Not bad!

So, this year's egg dyes are from red cabbage and the spice turmeric, following the directions from Lakewinds Co-op. After letting them sit in the refrigerator for a few hours, I took the eggs out and rinsed them off and was pleased to find I got a deeper blue from the cabbage than in past years—and some little white splotches that make them look more interesting than if they were just evenly colored. The turmeric always produces a nice rich gold color. (Compare the result from a couple of years ago in this blog post.)

Next: make deviled eggs, of course. And cole slaw—there's always more cabbage than I need just for eggs. And maybe next year I'll try some different foods, like beets, too.