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the miracle of springtime
Thursday, March 17 2016
This morning before drinking my usual Red Rose black tea, I had some nettle tea that Susan had given me last night. I expected it to have the taste of tea made from wads of toilet paper, but it was much better than that and even seemed to have a pleasant effect on my mood (though that could've been the placebo effect). Later, though, I felt bad (perhaps due to lingering effects of my recent illness, which began in earnest twelve days ago), and actually had to get out from in from of my desktop computer to lie down on the couch with my Chromebook instead.
This afternoon, I made another foray into the forest east of the Stick Trail, venturing a bit further than I've been going of late and gathering pieces from a small dry Chestnut Oak I felled. Weakened by illness and without the help of pseudoephedrine, the 88.15 pound load felt plenty heavy.
Though I didn't really want to go out for a second restaurant dinner in as many nights, Susan's recovery from the same illness I'd had pushed a promised dinner with them to tonight. Gretchen wanted to show them Plantae, the new vegan restaurant across the Hudson in Tivoli. We met Susan and David at a semi-abandoned hotel/pizza place across from the new geodesic domes on Route 28 (41.948954N, 74.042397W) and rode with them from Tivoli. David kept missing the turns he needed to make: first to US 209 north and then from 9G to Tivoli, and that was just the beginning of a series of minor mishaps. On learning Plantae lacks a liquor license and is in that initial BYOB phase, he went across the street to get me a beer and himself a cider. When David uncorked the cider, it became a geyser of foaming yellow fluid, requiring cloth towels to clean up. And then it turned out that the cider had gone bad and tasted like the worst examples of accidental hard cider manufacture from my college days. It smelled so bad, he had our waiter take it away and dump it down the sink. On Gretchen's urging, David tried to get a refund, but the asshole running the beer store said he was closing up and made some excuse for not providing a refund. That wouldn't've worked for Gretchen, but David didn't want the added aggravation that justice would've required. Happily, our waiter fetched David a beer from his "personal stash" on the house. Our waiter's "personal stash" (and the things to be found in it) would be a steady fount of humor for the rest of our meal.
As for the food, it was (from my perspective) good as usual, though I didn't go ape-shit over it like the others did. My avocado BLT tasted mostly just fatty to me, and my chili needed a lot of sriracha. Unfortunately, that is the only hot sauce Plantae has on hand, and it's not really enough for someone who really likes spicy food. (I keep forgetting to bring my Dave's Insanity Sauce.) Meanwhile David and Susan kept saying how this was the best restaurant in the entire Hudson Valley. Other topics discussed included investing in Kingston real estate and an idea David had of someone turning the abandoned block building across Zena Road from the Stewart's on Route 28 (41.993520N, 74.087188W) into a gritty hipster coffee shop. Normally that place only gets seasonal use as a lot for selling Christmas trees.
On our way home from our carpool with Susan and David as we drove southward past the wetlands of the Esopus Valley on Hurley Mountain Road, Gretchen and I heard the first Spring Peepers of the season. I buzzed down the windows and exclaimed, "Do you hear that?" Though it returns reliably every year to our beleaguered planet, springtime is nevertheless a miracle and something that will always come as a little bit of a surprise.
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