I’ve noticed an uptick in chatter about activities I consider “homesteading” . You know, making sourdough, canning those fruits you panic-bought but didn’t get to, making stock from leftover bones, planting vegetables and herbs.

My theory? In this time of uncertainty, we need grounding. And connecting to nature, to our food, to age-old patterns, they all serve to center us. Homesteading is all three at the same time. By digging our hands in the earth, by understanding the magic of the interaction of flour and water and bacteria to make yeast, by paying attention to when things bloom, by feeding our families what create ourselves, we feel a little steadier.

Plus, we have time now. And contrary to popular belief, this is the worst moment to embark on ambitious projects like learning the clarinet or starting the great American novel. I mean, if you have that kind of bandwidth, I don’t want to discourage you, that’s amazing. Many of us feel pretty proud when we put on pants.

We are that emotionally spent.

But.

Sprinkling some radish seeds in the ground? We can do that.

Shaking cream in a jar until it becomes butter? That’s a do-able.

Combining flour and water and leaving it out until it bubbles? Okeydokey.

Plus, all these are like science experiments, aren’t they? Watching things change and wondering why and how and when. In that way, they’re much more fun learning devices for all this found time with our children than another downloaded math worksheet.

I admit, I’ve always had a little homesteading love. Probably a side effect of reading too much Anne of Green Gables as a child. And an adult. So I make sourdough (I’ll risk tooting my own here to tell you it’s about the best sourdough I, or anyone else who’s tasted it, has ever had. But I’ll also tell you that that’s because I follow the very easy process outlined in Tartine). We’ve been known to make yogurt and cheese. We make limoncello. We collected puffball mushrooms (easy to spot, won’t kill you) and store them in olive oil. And we not only grow muscadine grapes, we also make muscadine grape jelly.

Still, until I saw a friend’s photos on Facebook, I had never thought to use those violets that turn Charlottesville lawns into fairy carpets in the spring. My friend posted about her experience making violet simple syrup. Besides it’s shockingly gorgeous color, violet simple syrup is apparently good for dry cough (might be useful) and skin conditions. Which sounds nice, but not as fun as the cocktail I was already thinking about as Siena and I headed out with our baskets.

We live in an old section of Charlottesville, which is criss-crossed with alleys that once brought coal and ice to the houses (our house came complete with a coal chute). Alleys are great places for social distancing, no sidewalks to awkwardly step down and cross the street, only to repeat.

We collected far more violets than we needed. But it’s spring, it’s beautiful outside, and it’s so easy to say, “Oh, but look at that patch, I’ll just pick a few more.” Plus, we made a calico friend.

Once home, we plucked the green bottoms off the violets, washed them, and put 4 cups of them in a glass jar. We covered the violets with water that we’d boiled and then let cool for 5 minutes (violets are very finicky about temperature and won’t produce that glorious purple color if they get too hot). The next day, we strained the liquid into a glass bowl. We got one cup of liquid and then added 2 cups of sugar (you need a 1:2 ratio of violet water to sugar) to the bowl. We put the bowl over a pot of simmering water (our jerry-rigged double boiler), and stirred until the sugar dissolved.

Then came the fun part. We added about 10 drops of lemon juice and watched the color change from blue to purple as we stirred. We nearly cut a caper right there in the kitchen. My almost 18-year-old daughter (egads) suddenly reminded me of her toddler self. When she’d go to sleep with sequins clutched in her hands. I tell you, in that moment, this pandemic felt like somebody else’ dream. And this, the dawning violet, was all there was.

Keith did make me a French 75 with the violet syrup that night. Into a cocktail shaker filled with ice he poured a jigger of gin, a half jigger of lemon juice, and a half jigger of violet syrup. He shook it up, strained/poured it into one of the retro glasses we picked up at a flea market, and it was sublime. I like to think it warded off a cough and my skin glowed. But really, the delight was the calm of picking violet after violet under a cloudless blue sky. Of creating something beautiful from the beauty of spring.