I know it’s been quiet around here this year. Looking back, I’ve apparently never gone a month without posting at least once since I inaugurated this blog (I could have sworn that wasn’t the case?!), and it’d be a shame to break that streak now. So here I am, emerging from the depths to poke my head above water.

We are still in a pandemic. I hope that wherever you are, you’re weathering it still.

What have I been up to in the early months of 2021? Well, in the midst of the Iowa winter, a curious phenomenon created these magnificent ice crystals, which I first noticed on the municipal Christmas trees, now unadorned after the holidays. I’m not sure what happened–meteorologically, atmospherically–but I hypothesized that the fog had frozen into something like snow on the branches. On the first day, the crystals looked like this:

The crystals were thickest on north-facing boughs, branches, and needles, and all the trees in town were thus bedecked. In the following days, I saw the crystals in sunlight, and miniature drippy icicles dangled from the tips of small branches, the icicles themselves feathered with crystals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.

In February, for Chinese New Year, I made homemade potstickers all by myself for the first time. (I did use storebought wrappers.) The filling was pork and cabbage, and I found snow pea sprouts to serve with the dumplings.

Then earlier this month, for Pi Day, I made a pie for the first time in a very long while (the piecrust was not homemade, alas). I had some frozen rhubarb in the freezer that I’d been meaning to make a dessert with, and I supplemented with blueberries.

The first flowers to bloom on the college campus are the squills. Nothing like blue flowers to herald the coming of spring!

Finally, I take every opportunity I can get to ingratiate myself with Mama Kitty, the local bar cat. She’s very sweet and likes rubbing her cheek past a hand or a knee, but I’m waiting (in vain?) for the day when she’ll sit in my lap.