beginnings
2012 April 18
I just texted Dan, who is in New Jersey visiting with his mom, “first peas are up!” I know we’re supposed to be sexting or something, but hello? the first peas are up!
A small army of carrots march up and down the garden, flashing their green, 2-fingered peace signs in the sun.
Rogue potatoes, forgotten in last year’s hand-scrambly harvest, are sprouting.
Spinach shakes off spring snow the way my kids shake off their warm layers by mid-day.
Chives wave their green flags, begging: “pick me, pick me.”
Alien heads of rhubarb split open.
Hops stitch up through the last year’s dead vines.
And children, beautiful, wild children unfurl their limbs in the sun, growing and stretching every day.
What is beginning at your place?
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Our lettuce! It’s so exciting to have our garden well underway with plans for three (yes, 3!) plantings. I’m most excited about all the tulips that found their way up through all the weeds I didn’t get around to pulling until Sunday. I just love tulips.
Um, the alien head picture is crazy! Who knew rhubarb was so creepy.
Spent all day out planting yesterday. Second set of peas in (first planted around St. Patrick’s Day – you can actually do that here). Pretty much all cool weather stuff (spinach family, lettuce, brassicas, onions) now in. Potatoes starting to grow (if the gophers don’t get them). Carrots in but not yet up. Still trying to determine best date to plant those here so might have gone a little late. Also planted 40 raspberries and 150 strawberries, plus moved the asparagus bed from Spokane. Phew. I may never get the dirt out from under my fingernails, but spring is SO exciting. Our pear tree started blooming last weekend. XO
I adore the photo of Rose and Col. Beautiful. We’ve got all kinds of things sprouting around here. Warmth and rain and cool keep coming in alternating shifts creating all kinds of goodness. Happy over here!
The hills are a deep green here in California with fields of poppies everywhere and all manner of flowering bushes and vines. I guess that we are just a few weeks ahead of what we just experienced as Spring (with some snow) in the mountains of Durango
Winter is apparently beginning here, again, after a week of snow and slush. I have stuffed a turkey in the slow-cooker, and am wondering how the tulips feel about their -12 (celcius. That’s got to be cold in F too) exposure. Sigh.
Sighing with you in solidarity…but somehow, a slow, drawn out spring with lots of stops and starts appeals to my hoarding self.
I’ve been pre-occupied with the inside of my house, but when I emerged on Sunday at 6 p.m. from a day of putting down flooring and installing bathroom fixtures, my neighbors all had piles of brush in the street for spring cleanup. I spent the next two hours with my new bowsaw getting the disreputably aphid prone bush out of my neighbor’s way, a lilac trimmed to closer to normal scale, and a variety of monkey trees cleaned out from next to my foundation and another neighbor’s fence. Along the way I noted the roses and oriental poppies stretching and unfurling, and some little violets are out and about…
Molly, I love hearing this.
“A small army of carrots march up and down the garden, flashing their green, 2-fingered peace signs in the sun.” I love that line!!
Wild flowers are starting to go off here in Southern California, especially with some late season storms. Perfect mountain biking scenery!
…also trying to think of something simple to plant this year. I’m not a good gardener. Maybe lettuce or tomatoes?
tomatoes do not strike me as simple. But lettuce, yes! Also herbs are pretty friendly: basil, chives, parsley, dill, cilantro…
Just back from the botanic garden! There we have dogwood, wisteria, tulips, the last of the crab apples, cherry trees, and lilacs lilacs lilacs oh I get drunk in that garden is there really such a thing as lilac wine, as Jeff Buckley sings (sang) about?
And back home we have a fat, fat Gnome — about twice his birth rate already. And the plants on the windowsill, in need of a good watering. Gotta do that!
Those potato leaves are just beautiful.
Ha! Sexting! You are so funny. Leeor is also away this week and his breathless call to me last night was all about the kids. They are changing so much right now!!
And I am going to meet Leeor for an adult only weekend in Austin–yipee! That’s what’s new. Not to mention the hallucinogenic blooming all around Berkeley–I was like a crazy forecaster of flora on our walk home from Avi’s school yesterday–it’s amazing out right now. xo
Whoa, I’ve never seen rhubarb doing that! I just found three humungous beets in the garden, greeens coming up and brilliant orb bodies so tempting, and yet so rotten. And sitting under the old apple tree is like being in a portal to the next dimension–buzzing of bees and nectar falling all around.
No wild children in our household, but we have plenty of big bunnies, red robins, even redder cardinals, and a blue jay. The squirrels are as busy as ever. As for the plants, the forsythia has no more yellow, the lilacs are bursting along with the yellow clove bushes, the green whirligigs (they call them squirters here in MI) are falling everywhere, the rose bushes have plenty of green and red leaves, my very old peonies have tiny buds, and the columbines are trying to produce buds. Oh, and we also have a great crop of big dandelions. It seems the yellow flowering plants come first, along with the early and mid-spring daffs. Most of the trees bear tiny fall-colored leaves. My hostas are poking their tips about six inches out of the ground. The indoor cats were after a flying insect all day yesterday (maybe there was more than one). Unfortunately we have no veggie garden. But I was just this morning writing about the garden in Durango in 1888. I doubt it’ was not much different than yours, including the young wild children. I do wonder if there were many mature fruit trees growing there in 1888. What’s in your cold frames right now?
Oh such a wonderful large plate of freshspinach sauteed! Enough for all of us!
Chives, mint, oregano and kale.
I cut 2 pounds of asparagus for last nights dinner. We gorge ourselves. If we didn’t flush toilets, the whole house would be odiferous from “asparagus pee.” Picking asparagus always cheers me up and makes me want to sing love songs.
2 pounds? 2 pounds! that is so wonderful.
We live on the farm that Ben grew up in. I am pretty sure the asparagus beds were here when they moved in 37 years ago. When I harvest the asparagus, I think of all the people these plants have nourished over the years – used couches, old tables and ancient asparagus plants…some of my favorite things!
Just garlic, but that’s all we have in so far (and you have to peek under the mulch at that). (So…do you think our garlic isn’t up very high because we literally planted it *while* the ground was freezing??) And, I did plant some asparagus crowns in the middle of the night. We have big, big plans though. Big. Next week: turkey hunting, but after that, we get down to some serious garden business. No more messin’ around.
We have green beans and corn showing their sprouts. Lettuce just ready to eat. Radishes maybe half way ready. Our potatoes plants are about to blossom. I know! We had almost no winter here this year. More like an extended late fall. And no snow that lasted more than a day. ( I feel safe saying that on the 19th of April.) I have a mock orange bush that is covered in blooms. And we ate dinner outside last night. I love spring.
Could there be any better metaphor for hope than the spinach sprouting right up through the snow? (And, oh, how I love me some spinach. Just call me Popeye.)
The boys and I got some seeds started last weekend, hoping to have some seedlings ready to transplant next month. My oldest is oddly addicted to cucumbers so we’ve added those to the mix and I’m hoping for a good yield later this summer.