and you could even use water if you don't have any stock on hand, so this recipe should work for you.

I made this on Friday night for dinner, with modifications based on what I had on hand. I used vegetable bouillon instead of stock. I didn't have harisa, and as I have an aversion to visiting the grocery store, I made a paste of garlic and cayenne: about half a teaspoon of pressed garlic and maybe an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne. And, I added a small regular potato in addition to the sweet one that was just a bit small. (In my kitchen, this is actually relatively few modifications!)

It was, despite the changes, still delicious, and even better reheated the next day. I think Henry Dave would approve - the veggies came from a CSA farm just down the road from Walden Pond. Except the tomatoes - these were our first tomatoes from the garden; they were volunteers from the compost and came up late! I hope more will ripen before the frost.

Yes, this soup is even better the next day. When I was creating it I spent a whole day trying to figure out if I should use carrots and finally, at the end of the day, I smacked my hand on my forehead and said "Duh! Sweet potatoes!" and I think it's the sweet potatoes that make it so good and even better once it's had a chance to sit around for a day.

Lucky you to live to close to the pond and to be able to visit it in all its seasons. I always find it odd to see someone ice fishing where I have been doing the backstroke not so many months ago. I've also heard that in the early spring you can hear the ice "singing" at night and that it sounds like whales singing. Have you ever heard that?

Hi Roz, thanks for the exciting soup recipe -- harisa is new to me, and my guess is the cinnamon is not the sort of thing that one finds on bushes in New England.

Thanks also for the notes from Walden Pond.  By coincidence, I happen to be reading "Walden" for the first time ever in my plainly ill-educated life, and am enjoying it terrificly.

Thanks to CyberBrook, for emphasizing how Thoreau was convinced that vegetarianism was the way to go.

By the way, Michael, Little White Dog and I were in Vermont this past weekend (Weston was where our cabin was), and encountered unseasonably warm weather.  But I do not know if "unseasonably" is the right word anymore, what with global warming kicking in.  Last year, we went up during the second weekend in October, and the leaves were beyond peak.  So this year, we went on the first weekend, only to find we were a bit too early; some trees had already changed color, but they were a precocious minority.  Still, regardless, motoring along the country lanes of Vermont, through the forests and alongside the mountains and streams, is always a joy.

And then yesterday, in northern New Jersey, I was staggering, sunstruck, across campus in 90-degree heat.  Incredible!

So surely there has been nothing unseasonably tough, these days, about taking a dip in Walden Pond.

Hi. Yes, it's been warm here lately. When I wrote this article four weeks ago we'd had a few cool days and I had a swim that was more typical of this time of year -- I felt chilled to the core when I got out. Since then I've had a few much warmer swims. One day recently it felt almost like bath water! It's sort of nice to have the season extended somewhat, but it's unsettling too....