As far as my childhood memories can take me, the issue of schooling was anything but complicated (this is back in the Middle Ages when Ronald Reagan was on his second presidency.) My neighborhood was home to several impressive looking academic buildings that required a uniform, phys ed gear, and hallway passes. I was part of several after school activities that ranged from chess club to fencing. I remember a nurse on staff, who tended to our aching bellies and cafeteria that offered organic meals that were organic for real (we became acquainted with the cows that supplied our frothy milk.)

The most complicated concern surrounding my schooling boiled down to which of the parental units was going to drop me off at school in the mornings. But by October of my first year, I was actually walking myself to school, located a mere two blocks from my house.

By today’s standards, my parents’ approach may seem criminal; but I’m not sure I was worse off for their ‘cavalier’ ways which gave me the confidence to fall back on my instincts. This rings truer now, when I consider that today leaving your child in the cereal aisle at IGA while ordering turkey breast may be misconstrued by onlookers as parental neglect. But I digress.

Last week my kindergartener received a report card based on his 1^st grade readiness test. Much to my chagrin, my child, who naturally I’d consider a genius, didn’t fare well during the hour-and-a-half exam. After a meeting with the teacher and principal that I’d rehearsed arguments for, I came to the conclusion the private education I was funding amounted to a fair rendition of the Hallelujah Psalms, a charming interpretation of sainthood and not much of anything else. Talk about your wake up call. A conclusion was reached; it was time to find another school.

Unfortunately we live a few short blocks outside of the decent public school district. Believe me, we contemplated incomprehensible illegal activities just to geographically qualify our boy for the tuition-free, superior education of the public variety. I know of several parents who use addresses of their grandmother’s second removed cousin just to profit from this privilege. I’ve also heard of the school’s detective efforts to weed them out. And while the risk is one worth taking, the potential consequence is a tough one. By the time Sag Harbor Elementary catches on to your sneaky game and expels junior, chances are private schools are full and your only option is Plan C, the one you were running from in the first place. Classic Catch 22.

All this chaos has led Josie Feinberg to go the home schooling route.

“I moved out to Sag from the city, because I refused to participate in the circus that had kindergarteners learning Mandarin to compete in global economy. I didn’t want to operate on lists filled with extra curricular activities that guaranteed an entrance into Dalton,” she explained on the phone while chauffeuring her three daughters from one after-school program to another for much needed, age-appropriate social interaction. “Imagine my surprise when I learned that this place is not exactly void of all that.”

Josie is not the only parent taking an alternative route to raising her children. Homeschooling efforts in the Hamptons have steadily increased over the last five years, meriting a formation of a support group that constantly welcomes new members.

But I don’t have the kind of patience this endeavor requires. Home schooling is not where my road forks. I still believe there is a lot of value to recess by the locker and all the drama of prom weekend.

The Montessori school is what we finally settled for. With a nod to traditional learning and just enough cojones to leave a lot to educated interpretation, this felt familiar, kind of like when I walked home from first grade, relying on my instincts, full of confidence that I will find my way home.

Helen A. Harrison

Every two years the Whitney Museum of American Art fills its galleries with what’s billed as a survey of current trends, including work by established and emerging artists. This is a show that’s routinely scorned by the critics, but not this time around. Encouraged by Roberta Smith’s rave review in The New York Times, as well as a favorable writeup in New York magazine by her husband, Jerry Saltz, I approached the current Whitney biennial optimistically. I came away wondering if I’d stumbled into the wrong museum.

Anyone hoping for something fresh and original will be sadly disappointed. Not that art has to be fresh and original to be good, but after reading descriptions like “new and exhilarating”  (Smith), “a forest of good signs” (Saltz) and “visually entertaining as well as thought provoking” (Emily Nathan on Artnet), one might expect some innovations. Instead, to me at least, the show is more like a demonstration of how to reinvent the wheel. A stroll through the galleries is a walk down memory lane. Tom Thayer’s video reprises Len Lye’s experimental films from the 1930s, and Luther Price’s hand-manipulated 35mm slides hark back to Ibram Lassaw’s similar experiments in the 1940s. Richard Hawkins goes straight to the art history books for his collages  (based on Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh-fu notebooks), which quote everyone from Gustave Moreau to Francis Bacon. Joanna Malinowska’s cryptically titled From the Canyons to the Stars is a large-scale reworking, in faux ivory and horn, of Duchamp’s bottle-rack readymade, as if such a droll commentary on originality in art needed further elaboration. Lutz Bacher dispenses with creativity altogether by framing up pages from a book of celestial formations. Her randomly-played Yamaha organ is a shade more interesting, although the shade is that of John Cage.

I confess that I didn’t sit through all the video and performance pieces — the “open rehearsal” by Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players that occupied most of the fourth floor on the day I was there was all I could take. It was about as interesting as watching paint dry, which you can do on the third floor, where electric fans are gradually evaporating Sam Lewitt’s “Fluid Employment.” I did stop in to see Werner Herzog’s Hearsay of the Soul. A leader of the New German Cinema who now lives in Los Angeles, Herzog has made a bombastic tribute to Hercules Segers, a very minor 16^th century Dutch landscapist, whose work he presents in slide form with dramatic musical accompaniment. According to Herzog, Segers is an unrecognized genius and pioneering modernist, but I think he’s kidding. At least I hope so. A little humor is welcome in this otherwise very earnest show.

Narcissism is a sub-theme, nowhere more so than in Dawn Kasper’s installation, This Could Be Something If I Let It. The artist has moved all her stuff into the museum, and her artwork is herself spending time with it. Similarly, on the fifth floor mezzanine, Georgia Sagri has assembled a bunch of self-referential objects that have little interest to anyone but Sagri. This type of navel-gazing has been done before, and better, by performance artists like Marina Abramovic and Colette, whose tableau-vivant environments comment more broadly on gender roles, not just on first-person issues.

Call me reactionary, but the work I actually enjoyed is pretty conventional, which is not to say that it isn’t original. Nicole Eisenman’s monotype portraits don’t break any new ground technically, but each one is a singular examination of a particular subject. Eisenman is an abstract artist in the literal meaning of that term, probing the essence of what she observes. In a more formalist vein, Andrew Massulo’s small paintings follow a traditional path, using strong colors, eccentric shapes and stark contrasts to create lively, intriguing images. Both artists have managed to make novel work within established guidelines. But if you want something really subjective, go into the second floor room devoted to Forrest Bess. Not surprisingly, Massulo is a fan and a collector of his work. In a mini-retrospective assembled by the artist Robert Gober, this supremely odd painter expressed an inner vision that is at once familiarly “primitive” and totally unique. Bess, who died 35 years ago, seems more avant-garde than most of the Whitney’s live ones.

by Lauren Chatman

Because it felt like July last week, I almost expected the farm stands to be up and running, stocked with vegetables I’m used to eating when the temperature climbs into the 80s. I searched far and wide for something local to no avail. Okay, I took a drive to Betty and Dale’s on the Bridgehampton Sag Harbor Turnpike, and when I saw that the stand was still closed for the season I consoled myself with a Bay Burger milkshake. Fortified, I kept going, to David Falkowski’s cart on Butter Lane in Bridgehampton where I was finally able to snag a bunch of leeks.

I’m not complaining. Unlike city farm markets, where shoppers are ready to step on each other to get to the leeks and wild ramps at this time of year, the Bridgehampton stand was unattended and I was the only customer in sight. I happily deposited three dollars in the cash box, set my leeks next to me in the passenger’s seat, and brought them home.

Competitive cooks fight over leeks not just because they are the first sign of the vegetable bounty to come, but because of their sweet and delicate onion flavor, which enhances many foods without overwhelming. Leeks are versatile. Thinly slice them and toss them with halved cherry tomatoes, seeded and sliced cucumber, black olives, and oil and vinegar for a mildly pungent salad. Sauté them and then add some eggs and crumbled goat cheese to the pan for a quick spring scramble. Use them to make vichyssoise or French onion soup. Place them in gratin dish, pour a cheesy béchamel sauce over them, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and bake. I could go on.

At the farm stand, look for younger leeks, no more than 1 ½ inches in diameter. These will be milder and less tough than the giant specimens you see in supermarkets, the ones that have to be wrestled into a plastic bag and take up half a shopping cart. To prepare leeks for cooking, strip away any withered outer leaves. Trim and discard the roots and the dark green parts of each leek. Leeks are often full of sand and soil, no surprise since they’ve just been pulled from the earth. To clean, slice them in half lengthwise and rinse them well, ruffling the layers to remove any grit hiding inside. If you want to cook your leeks whole, use a sharp paring knife to cut a deep 2-inch slit from the root end through, and then rinse under cold running water while separating the layers to rinse away any dirt.

Just because I was dealing with a spring vegetable didn’t mean I couldn’t pretend it was the height of summer. So I fired up the grill. I trimmed the roots and upper leaves from my leeks, leaving just about 2 inches above the whites. Then I brushed the leeks with vegetable oil, sprinkled them with salt, and grilled them, turning once, until they were charred on the outside and cooked through. Conveniently, I grilled my teriyaki flank steak skewers alongside them, and both were ready to eat in about 8 minutes. I quickly chopped the leeks and sprinkled them over the flank steak skewers, along with a tablespoon of sesame seeds, and I had a summery dinner with some spring flavor.

Grilled Teriyaki Flank Steak Skewers with Grilled Leeks

Serves 4

Teriyaki sauce contains some sugar, which gives the flank steak a wonderfully caramelized crust. It can also cause sticking, so oil the grill grids well before cooking.

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup mirin

2 tablespoons sugar

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 ½ teaspoons ground black pepper

1 ¼ pounds flank steak, cut across grain into 1/4-inch thick strips

1 tablespoon vegetable oil plus more for the grill

4 leeks, trimmed and washed

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

1. Combine soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar in a small pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, to dissolve sugar. Bring to a simmer, cook for 2 minutes, and pour into a glass measuring cup to cool.

2. Combine teriyaki sauce, garlic, and pepper in a large zipper-lock bag. Add flank steak strips, seal, and turn several times to coat meat with marinade ingredients. Let stand 15 minutes.

3. Heat gas grill to high. Clean grids and brush with vegetable oil. Brush leeks with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil.

4. Thread meat onto thin metal skewers. Grill meat and leeks, turning once, until leeks are lightly charred and softened and steak is cooked to desired doneness (6 to 8 minutes total). Transfer skewers to a serving platter, sprinkle with scallions and sesame seeds, and serve.

Now that I have gathered every variety of hellebore on the East End of Long Island into my hot little hands, my focus is turning to some of the other early spring bloomers popping up in the garden and at the garden centers. It appears that my forget-me-nots have disappeared due to over-energetic edging, so they will have to be replaced, but they’re not in yet, so my dirty fingers are wandering towards other interesting temptations.

I vowed this year I would be better at creating a tapestry of plants that have coherence and not just be seduced by the showy things that so often catch my eye; so along with the big flowers, I’m trying to make sure I’m bringing home plants that knit areas together.

I’ve always thought the best deal in the world was to buy Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ (Creeping Jenny) in the 4”-size people sell as an annual for pots, and instead stick it in the ground. After years of doing this, I’m finally starting to build up a momentum of chartreuse that works fantastically as connective stitches between different plant families.

I discovered the spotted dead nettle or lamium called ‘Purple Dragon’ last year, with a large white splotch on the leaf and a great purple flower that’s going gangbusters this spring. It’s much, much more vigorous than other varieties, so a few more jumped into my car and followed me home along with another variety called ‘Ghost’ that has the same deep purple snapdragon like flower and a bigger white blotch, but is meant to be an even taller, more vigorous version. I’m going to have a run off between the two to see which does better and I feel compelled to bring ‘White Nancy’ home, too, just because a girl can never have too many white flowers in her yard.

I also snatched up some of the variegated white edge salvia nipponica ‘Fuji Snow.’ It really isn’t about flowering (it has yellow blah flowers in mid summer that really do nothing for me); but, instead, is spreading nicely under the shade of my largest apple tree. And that’s a tough spot; my ajuga ‘Burgundy Glow’ is just sort of sitting there sulking, so more of it just happened to jump into the car.

I know, I know, I know that for us plantaholics there’s always room for one more plant to squeeze in somewhere, but too many onesies and twosies end up as a polka dotted jumble, so repetition is the key — and a great excuse to buy things in bunches. At least five at a time is my new rule. This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to still slip one of each of those beautiful new tiarellas into my box of things I have to have; but it also means that when I’m deciding which of the two new edging salvias in the dimension series, I’m going to make sure I buy enough to make a real impact. I have to have the deep violet, rose-colored one, but I have to wait, because they were snatched up so fast it made my head spin.

For some reason, I’ve never really used a lot of astilbes in the garden, but I adore goatsbeard, especially the dwarf aruncus called ‘Misty Lace.’ I think their flowers are just a little prettier and I love the way their lacey textured foliage blends in with other leaves, especially with epimediums. Now you might be a huge barrenwort fan, but if you don’t have soil that’s too heavy and they survive the winter, they will spread and run and eventually even take over your shady, dry places. And that’s a rare and amazing quality in a plant. I can’t remember if it was five or seven that I added to my ever-growing pile, but I could have used a couple dozen.

Creating a tapestry doesn’t always mean buying just groundcovers, it also means thinking about how plants go together. So when you buy those amazing spring blooming plants, that you know you have to have and you know will go dormant, remember you should also plant something at the same time that will fill in later and cover the bare spot. With bleeding hearts, dicentra, the obvious partners are hostas and ferns — depending on your deer situation; but I recommend brunnera. People also suggest heuchera, but I murder those puppies with such impunity each year that this spring I’m going to try tiarellas and heucherellas instead, both of which seem a little tougher to me.

With oriental poppies, you can either use coreopsis or Russian sage or black-eyed susans or crocosmia. Anything that’s going to come into full flower after the poppies do their thing, but don’t push up so much foliage that they shade the plant out before it goes dormant will work. In other words don’t use daylilies like I did, as they’ll just run roughshod over the poppies. This year I only have three left as the rest got swallowed up. My solution? I’m trying the suggestion of a friend who planted bearded iris with the poppies, so guess what else is squeezing into the car? A mess of those new wine colored reblooming irises I spotted on the plant racks with a bushel of hot pink ‘Watermelon’ oriental poppies. Whoops I guess there’s not going to be a lot of room left in the car!

Paige Patterson is loved by her friends – especially the one who brought her a bag of Ivory Prince Hellebores from Whole Foods in Manhattan!

Coming of journalistic age in the late 1970s, I was lucky to have caught the tail end of an era punctuated by the rhythm of manual typewriters being hammered on by gruff throated news editors who held firm to the tenets of brevity, wry cynicism and an unwritten code upholding journalistic honor.

As young reporters we were prodded, cajoled and taunted by the more seasoned reporters on the city desk who steadily cranked out probing exposés on political maneuverings and budget finagling with unwavering ease. Theirs’ was a world of spiny disbelief and jaunty righteousness, fueled by the fearless doggedness of Woodward and Bernstein, who had proven the power of the corroborated written word, just having brought the Nixon presidency to its knees.

It was a golden age for J-school graduates. There were jobs, then, at sentinel weeklies across the country, suburban dailies — which served like farm teams to the big leagues — and the venerable city papers. You worked your way up from rewriting engagement announcements, to logging obituaries and the police blotter. You learned how to call complete strangers for their opinions on everything from school taxes and property reassessments to climate change and women’s lib. You covered never-ending school board meetings and hotly contested zoning hearings, reveling in the mastery of career gadflies, eager for their chance at the podium.

If you wound up behind the editor’s desk before the age of 30, you had made it. And that’s what many of us did, as we cut our teeth on land preservation deliberations and the particular curiosities of police contract negotiations — the stuffing of what was then considered a noble profession of making sense of modern times: local reporting.

Along the way you were mentored by an unusual cast of salty characters who believed in an essential order of right and wrong, good guys vs. bad guys, free speech and a front page scoop. The advantage we had then was time — to check our facts before the presses rolled. We were all playing by the same rules. The daily or weekly deadline neutralized the impulsive among us. Tomorrow, or next week, the story would advance on its own merits, in its own time.

Fast forward some 30-plus years to a time when young journalism graduates grapple for “editorships” as sole reporters on news aggregates that report in real time at a breakneck speed. Dispensed to report in a vacuum, filing stories without context in a rush to beat the Internet

It is the weekly broadsheet, trimmed down though she may be to accommodate current financial realities, that has emerged as the last vestige of a reporter’s training ground. For it is here you learn the importance of checking your facts and running the risk of bumping into your source at the local fish market. It is here where you learn that your words affect neighborhoods, backyards, ball fields, and livelihoods. It is here that decisions get played out over a generational context, where what was said yesterday will effect what will happen tomorrow.

Case in point — a hot July evening the summer of 1980. The meeting room is filled to capacity to hear public comment on proposed budget cuts. The list of speakers lengthening with every new perspective as a gray haired fellow takes the podium, presents a rousing argument against raising taxes, pounds his fist to punctuate his every point and takes his seat to a round of applause. Sitting down right next to me, he looks me squarely in the eye with a wink and triumphant grin, and promptly slumps over from a heart attack.

A mad scramble for an ambulance ensues. A doctor steps up to perform CPR. Tax arguments receded as the public hearing transformed into a prayer vigil among neighbors. The heart attack proved fatal. At the weekly paper we decided to run the tax speech on the front page as homage to public discourse and civic participation. The budget story was buried on page four.

As the vast frontier of Internet news settles into manageable territories, and a new breed of editors emerge to juggle seamless deadlines with an ever growing national appetite for who said what to whom re-tweeted instantly over the 4G network, it’s anyone’s guess what will become of old-school reporting. We’ll get the ‘who, what, where and when’ but rarely stick around long enough to learn why.

Christine Bellini, an essay writer and former news editor, is an editorial consultant who spends a good deal of her time pondering the cultural curiosities of The Hamptons from her Sag Harbor tree house.

By Anetta Nowosielska

Adam Cohen plans on making the Hamptons his home base this summer. Why should you care? Check out Leonard Cohen’s son’s latest album ‘Like a Man,’ and find out why this is good news for any music lover.

AN: Let’s talk about ‘Like a Man.’ How did this record come about?

AC: Songs on this record are actually old. I didn’t write anything for this album. What they do have in common is that they were all abandoned at one point or another. The reason why is because they sounded too much like my father’s work and/or they didn’t have the commercial mobility that I was seeking. The process of actually putting them on a record was painless and electrifyingly fun with an absence of tyranny that I usually experience in the studio. The rules were strict, with three takes to record songs. I recorded with one microphone and other musicians in the studio, so it was a lot like recording in the 60’s. The objective was to capture some magic.

AN: These are pretty romantic songs. Would you say that this is your disposition as a man?
AC: I can’t make those declarations about myself; I have to let the songs speak for themselves. I take a lot of time to write them. I’m not a terribly prolific writer; I’m actually rather slow. But I take great care and time to write these stories and try to take those stories and amorous recollections and document them. If these songs don’t speak really loudly for me and the events and the people and the recollections then I’ve done a really bad job.

AN: Unlike many celebrity spawn, you don’t shy away from your lineage. Was that a process or did you always embrace being your father’s son?

AC: I’ve always had healthy esteem for my father that only has deepened over the years. The reason why my music didn’t resembled his in the beginning was because I thought that my obligation was to carve out my own path. It’s also because my appetite for success and participation in the music business was a lot greater than actually participating in the arts. I always thought that the arts would catch up to me. It was a symptom of arrogance. I certainly didn’t rebel against my father. I felt I was in an arena too separate from his. Now that I’m embracing the tradition I was brought up in and I have deepened my admiration for who he is. But I’m also older; I became a father myself. I watched my father climb back on the stage in his late 70’s and be at the height of his career, which was incredibly inspiring. So there are many reasons why I came home, so to speak, and really embraced family business.

AN: You’ve gone through frequent sonic metamorphoses. Can we expect you to stick to this particular sound?

AC: Right now I’m really married to this project. I’m deeply involved in it, and take great care of it. Thinking about future projects is like thinking about my next wife. It’s like infidelity. My head is not in that.

AN: You’ve recorded an album in French. Are there are any differences in how you express yourself in one language vis-à-vis another?

AC: Anybody, who speaks another language, knows that there are different cultural evocations and cadences and cultural precedence and these are wonderful pockets to savor and enjoy and of course each language is like a different key to a different door. As a writer you are looking to establish your own identity or voice. And that identity should come through whatever language you are employing. That is the real challenge. I don’t see it as a barrier of language, rather as a barrier of definition one is able to create with one’s own art.

AN: So what exactly is the voice of Adam Cohen?

AC: That’s not for me to say. That’s for me to be in possession of and dispense with as much prowess, consistency and loyalty as I can. And the truth of the matter is that I haven’t. I feel like I just arrived at something that is comfortable and satisfying to me. It has produced my proudest achievement yet, which is this work. What comes next is not for me to say. It is for me to do.

AN: Is there a specific song on this album that stands out to you?

AC: ‘What Other Guy’ is emblematic of this album and if you like it, chances are you will like the record. It’s sweeping, romantic, generous and an accurate amorous recollection. It pays beautiful homage to someone I know and it sounds like what I actually wanted it to.

AN: You mentioned wanting to leave something lasting for you son to reference. Does this album do the trick?

AC: Absolutely. Should he want to consult this work, I’d be very proud.

Mother didn’t like him. We married anyway. She never got over her deep-seated prejudice. Now she’s dead and we don’t miss her.

-D.R. Lewis

Thanks to the efforts of a few egg-loving citizens, it became legal in late July to keep up to 6 chickens per half-acre in our village backyards. I have no desire to add chicken-keeping to my list of chores (walking a miniature poodle three times a day is all that I can handle), but I hoped to benefit nonetheless when the chicken-friendly zoning ordinance went into effect. If the people down the block found themselves with surplus eggs, I would be ready to take some off their hands.

With the longer days of spring (chickens lay more eggs when there is more daylight) my hopes have been realized. At this time of year, hens can produce six eggs per week. One neighbor with several birds recently complained to me that she would have to start taking Lipitor with her breakfast if she wanted to consume all of the eggs she was now collecting. I immediately offered to buy a dozen, but she insisted on obeying the law and gave them to me for nothing. The ordinance, it seems, prohibits the sale of home-raised eggs.

“Free, fresh, local eggs without the fuss of backyard chickens!” I thought. “Village life doesn’t get any better than this!” (Unfortunates without chicken-keeping neighbors can purchase local eggs at the Farmer’s Market, Iacono’s, or North Sea Farms for about $6 a dozen, still a bargain).

Freshly laid organic eggs are too good to waste on chocolate chip cookie dough or pound cake. Better to use them in a dish where they star. I had heard that the fresher the eggs, the easier they are to poach, so I thought I’d bone up on best poaching practices and test this premise. The idea of breaking an egg into a pot of boiling water is a little bit scary. How on earth will it hold together? And how will you know when it is cooked properly? A few techniques help ease the anxiety. First, to easily slide your eggs into the pot, crack them into custard cups or small teacups before you begin. When your water comes to a boil, add some vinegar or lemon juice. The acid will tighten up the egg whites, helping the eggs stay in one piece. Finally, once you have added your eggs you should remove the pot from the heat, cover it, and let the eggs cook in hot but not boiling water. This way, you minimize the chances that your eggs will break into pieces in the vigorously boiling water or that they will overcook.

My first poached local eggs went right on top of toast for lunch. But I still had 10 eggs in my carton. I waited until dinner, and then enjoyed them again, this time on top of pasta. Is there a simpler, more extravagantly delicious sauce for spaghetti? The variations are endless: Instead of bacon and bread crumbs, add chopped cooked spinach, ham, smoked salmon, mushrooms, pesto, tomato sauce, or any other ingredient that might marry well with a rich egg yolk.

The following recipe would be wonderful at an Easter lunch. On Mother’s Day, when local asparagus will be available, you can cut a half-pound into 1-inch lengths, boil for 2 minutes, drain, and toss them into the pot along with the breadcrumbs and bacon.

Spaghetti with Bacon, Breadcrumbs, and Poached Eggs

Serves 4

Don’t freak out if your egg whites look like they’ve split into a hundred shreds on contact with the hot water. Cover the pot and have some faith. Somehow, they will come back together during poaching.

4 ounces bacon, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 cup fresh bread crumbs

Salt

Ground black pepper

3/4 pound spaghetti

4 large eggs

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ cup finely chopped fresh parsley

Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Cook the bacon in a medium skillet over medium-high heat until just crisp, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate and drain off all but 2 tablespoons of fat. Add garlic to pan and cook 30 seconds. Add bread crumbs to pan and cook, stirring, until crisp, 2 to 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and remove from heat.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water and a 12-inch sauté pan with 2 inches of water to boil. Add the spaghetti to the large pot. Set a kitchen timer for 6 minutes.

3. Crack the eggs into custard cups or small teacups. When the timer goes off, remove the skillet from the heat and add the vinegar. One at a time, slide the eggs into the water. Cover the pan and let stand until whites are just set, 4 to 5 minutes depending on the size of the eggs.

4. Drain spaghetti and return to the pot. Stir in the bacon, breadcrumb mixture, butter, and parsley. Divide among 4 pasta bowls.

5. Use a slotted spoon to lift eggs from saucepan and place on top of pasta bowls. Garnish with grated Parmesan cheese and serve immediately.

Enters large Red fox.

I chase.

Buddy’s face reflects…”Whoa… What just happened“

- Audrey Gaul

by Paige Patterson

It’s been spring for ages, and I’m jonesing for new plants!

Well the snowdrops are up, the hellebores are in full bloom, my witch hazel has been going for a couple of months now, I have two prunus mume, Japanese flowering apricots, in full on pink riots of open flowers and there’s a magnolia in bloom on Rose Street in the village. Crazy! Well yesterday was the first day of spring, but in my garden it’s been spring for ages, thanks to the winter that wasn’t! Not that I’m complaining as I loathe the cold, but my hydrangea leaves are opening, my daylilies are up, all my roses have new foliage and I’m dying to plant something!

I thought about sowing some mache lettuce weeks and weeks ago but didn’t because I was sure it was going to get super cold, now I’m kicking myself because I didn’t. Of course, if I had, we’d probably have had a blizzard, but for the last week or so every cell in my body is telling me that it’s spring time and it’s time to root around in the garden.

I’ve already bought all my seeds, I even got some sent to me compliments of Renee’s Garden so I can write and tell you how they work out; but how do you figure out when to start seeds when there hasn’t even been a first hard frost, let alone a last one?

My peas are in and spinach is going in tomorrow, as is arugula. I did start my Imperial Star artichoke seeds on my one windowsill with sun, but until I win Lotto and get a greenhouse, I’ve got to play it safe for a while with sticking things in the soil. I must say the idea of having artichokes that can actually set buds their first year would be killer, as they’re just not meant to make it through the winter here. There are a couple of us trying to overwinter ones from last year, and this winter has been a godsend for us, but I’m excited to try the Imperial and I think I’ve got a source for organic Tavor artichoke plants, I’ve ordered 48! Woo hoo! I’m going to tuck them into all my flowerbeds.

But since I’m really itching to plant something, I made a quick round to the few nurseries that are still open and picked up some more hellebores, because who can have too many hellebores right? Shady loving, deer resistant, hard to kill and one of the first signs of spring – what’s not to love? What most of the nurseries have right now are your basic helleborus niger, commonly known as the Christmas or Lenten Rose. Even during this mild, mild winter, none of mine were up at Christmas, but I heard tell of a few in a sheltered area of Springs and I thought I spied one on Suffolk Street, although I might have imagined it.

What was blooming for me before the holidays were my h. foetidus, or stinking hellebore. I happen to love these plants, mostly because I go nuts for green flowers, although I’ve lost a number of them to cold snaps when we have warm early winters and then the temperatures drop. I have just reestablished a nice grove of the variety ‘Wester Flisk’; which has a thinner, more finely cut, ferny leaf; around my non-disease-resistant peach tree’s base, and I’m hoping the last of my straight species will set some seed this year, but if not I can always get more babies at Marders when they come in at the end of the month. Anyway, the basic Lenten rose is wonderful, but keep your eyes out for the hybrids that are h. niger crosses and all have larger, more upright flowers. There’s one called ‘Jacob’ which blooms earlier than the ‘Snow Lady’ which is going strong now.

The hellebores I truly can’t get enough of are the h. orientalis and its hybrids. The species self-seeds with abandon in my garden, which is brilliant. Unfortunately, I had to move a big Japanese maple smack into the middle of the oldest and most prolific bed, so the show this year isn’t going to be stellar; but I did transplant a bunch of them to other spots in the garden.

I know I’m always raving about there being no such thing as too many plants, but I really feel that way about hellebores, and their colors are getting to be amazing. From which really looks like true black to pure white, purple, pink, spotted, frilled, contrasting veins, red, green, doubles and now yellows and peach, the heart does little flippy flops just thinking about them.

‘Grape Galaxy’ is deep purple with black freckles and is to die, ‘Mrs. Betty Ranicar’ is triple layers of white that looks almost ranunculus like, ‘Blue Metallic Lady’ is a cool slate blue single while ‘Frilly Kitty’ is a double that ranges in shades from the palest pink to deep maroon. And then there’s ‘Swirling Skirts’, a white double with tiny freckles.

The ones I want most desperately are those that were bred by Marietta O’Byrne and are distributed by a wholesale plant breeding company called Terra Nova, the same folks that are responsible for the whole heuchera craze. They breed plants with the “havetohave” gene. I need helleborus ‘Winter Jewels™ Onyx Odyssey’, with double slate, purple and black flowers the way I used to need Manolo Blahniks. And then there’s ‘Winter Jewel Cherry Blossom’ — single and semi double anemone shaped flowers in soft pink with dark rose veins, with a picotee edging and a little starburst in the center. Be still my heart.

Paige Patterson plans on nabbing most of the helleborus ‘Winter Jewels™ Black Diamond’ arriving at Marders this week!