"What is this?"  I found myself asking my husband the other day, waving at him a chartreuse plant, shaped like a fractal. From time to time we buy our produce from a co-op which deals exclusively in retailing boxes of mixed fruits and veggies.  Though the produce is yummy and far cheaper than the grocery store, there's no choice involved.  You buy your box and get what's in it - green chartreuse fractal and all.  I took a picture of this oddity and sent it to a friend who is a farmer.  "What is this?" I texted her.  This too drew a blank.  A day later I collared a woman stocking produce in our grocery store.  I pointed to a small bundle tucked between endives and bouquets of fresh rosemary and thyme.  "What is this?" I asked for a third time.  "Romanesco" she replied, "just cook it like cauliflower." Romanesco.  At this time of year, I'm always scanning my book shelves for some sun-drenched read, "A Year in Provence" or "Under the Tuscan Sun" anything with a plot that revolves around en plein air eating, walking tours of countrysides, remodels of old rambly Mediterranean houses, olives, and more en plein air eating.  I had not yet started that annual book hunt, so it was lovely this year to have been handed a tasty green emissary from such idyls.  

Though not quite officially spring here, a slight upturn in the temperature has been all the inducement we've needed to get out.  We've been hiking some and the boys have been busy at work constructing a fort in a copse of aspen saplings.  My parents and Grandma were here last week, and the boys and their grandpa did quite a bit of construction, thatching the roof with grass and securing up some of the sides with reinforcements of deadfall.  From a distance we could see the three of them at work, their blue and orange jackets sharp against the winter-browned land. 

There's something so spectacular about the palette at this time of year.  I love the look of a land about to change...