By April began wet, the fields still brown and the mud still deep in the low areas, but the daffodils in the front bed came up on schedule and the forsythia down near the road is showing color, which is the real signal. When the forsythia goes yellow in Vermont you know the earth has committed. Everything after that is momentum.
I called Bill with the peeper report and he had his own to offer: the osprey returned to the nest above the cove a quarter mile from his house, which is his equivalent of the peepers — a migrating bird coming back to the same place it has used for eight years. He knows this because he has been watching the nest for eight years. He said when he sees the osprey land he feels that the winter has been accounted for, that it lasted exactly as long as it needed to last and now it is done. I told him I understood that precisely.
The garlic is up — the green points showing through the straw mulch in the back bed, improbable little declarations after all those months in the cold. Garlic that has been in the ground since September pushing up into April always strikes me as heroic in the small way that plants are capable of heroism: the complete commitment, the indifference to conditions, the straightforward execution of what the garlic is supposed to do. I pulled back a little of the mulch to let the light reach the young plants and took a photograph of the row for the blog and wrote two sentences about the garlic coming up and nothing else. Sometimes two sentences is the right length.
Ted's grandsons have been appearing at my back door with some regularity since the ground softened enough for children to be outside without their parents worrying. They knock formally and ask if I need help with anything in the garden. I have been giving them small legitimate tasks — raking the beds clear of winter debris, moving the last of the straw mulch, pulling the leaves off the strawberry bed. They work seriously and well. The eleven-year-old, whose name is Owen, asked me this week why I plant garlic in fall rather than spring and I gave him the real answer, which he processed with the careful face of a child who has decided to take information seriously. I think Owen is going to be a gardener.
The garlic points coming up through the mulch this week put me in the mood for something that honored that particular green energy — young, bright, a little sharp. Asparagus is the other spring crop that asks nothing of you and gives everything back, and with a good hit of lemon and garlic it becomes the kind of dish that tastes like the season actually arrived. I made this on a Tuesday evening after Owen and his brother had gone home, and it felt like the right quiet celebration of a day that had gone exactly as it should.
Lemon Garlic Asparagus
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 17 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh asparagus, tough ends trimmed
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
- Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat. Heat your oven to 400°F and line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Prepare the asparagus. Snap or cut the woody ends from the asparagus spears and arrange them in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet.
- Season. Drizzle the olive oil over the asparagus, then scatter the minced garlic evenly across the spears. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Toss gently to coat and return to a single layer.
- Roast. Roast for 10 to 12 minutes, until the asparagus is tender and the tips are just beginning to brown at the edges. Thinner spears will cook faster; check at 10 minutes.
- Finish with lemon. Remove from the oven and immediately squeeze the lemon juice over the hot spears. Scatter the lemon zest on top.
- Serve. Transfer to a platter and finish with freshly grated Parmesan if desired. Serve warm.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 90 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 6g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 240mg