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Daydreaming of summer

2013 March 14

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As we drift into mid-March, I’m finishing up the year-long series I’m writing for Edible Ohio Valley magazine, covering four-season home vegetable gardening. The spring issue will be headed to the printer soon, which leaves me with just the final issue of the series (and the rather daunting prospect of condensing summer’s gardening tasks into 2,000 words). But between seed starting activities, a recent warm and sunny weekend tease, and mentally walking through summer gardening for the article, I’m positively bursting at the seams with joy over the upcoming growing season.

The other night, while importing photos from my camera to my computer, an errant click landed me on a particularly luscious photo of a tomato from last year, which got me to browsing through the remaining photos from the summer of 2012. Again, {joy}. I think I smiled for an hour straight.

That’s what life’s passions do for the soul. I’ve found mine; I hope you’ve found yours (and if you haven’t, seek. It’s worth the journey).

At the risk of sliding into the dreaded forced-to-endure-other-people’s-endless-vacation-photos territory, I wanted to share some of these scenes from my 2012 garden, more or less ordered from spring to winter. If you takeaway nothing else, I hope it’s that vegetables are as beautiful as flowers.

At least, I find them to be so.

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Which brings us to March, 2013. Seed-starting is well under way inside my home. Basil, leeks, green onions, yellow storage onions, and spinach have broken through the soil. The first round of tomato seeds are snug on the warming mat, to be followed tomorrow by celery, peppers, and flat-leaf parsley. Seed ginger sprouts in buckets filled with coconut fiber to get a head-start on the summer. A small batch of kale and radish seeds have been sown outdoors by the deck, protected from stray snowstorms (1/2″ yesterday) under makeshift cloches. Elsewhere in the yard, the green shoots from garlic and French shallots wait for permanent warmth to begin their growth spurts.

Last weekend was long-sleeved T-shirt weather: sunny and nearly 70°F. Patches of snow from a blizzard a few days before lingered in shady areas (but not for long). I pulled on my new garden boots, still stiff and bright, and pushed a shovel deep into the ground. It yielded easily.

Thawed, is what that meant.

I grabbed my packets of Dinosaur kale and Pink Beauty radish seeds, and got to work.

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Comments:

4 Responses
  1. March 14, 2013

    Oh, end of winter, you are such a tease…
    Spring, we are ready for you!

  2. March 15, 2013

    Those photos nearly made me weep. We’re hip deep in snow and more is supposed to fall over the next week. I know it will come soon, much sooner than a month ago, and far sooner than at Christmas, but this last, long, expectant few weeks will be tough. I can’t wait to smell the earth awakening and the ground under my feet. I have so much planned for the garden this year. Thanks for these beautiful photos.

  3. Jessica permalink
    March 15, 2013

    These are beautiful! I needed this. Thank you!

  4. March 15, 2013

    I’ve been longing for summer too. I only have 3 small raised beds and an herb garden right now, so I’m here sitting at my computer completely in awe of yours. WOW.

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