1st week of April 2008
We are getting our first real glimpses of spring - crocuses and days we can work outdoors without a winter coat. Being able to start digging in the dirt again is envigorating and almost an intoxicating feeling after a winter of indoor life. Last week I was adding compost to coldframe beds and transplanted 100+ baby lettuces for early spring salads. The main gardens are still too soggy for major cultivation but I did scratch some areas to plant Swiss chard, radishes, carrots, and peas under barrels. These make great portable mini-greenhouses (if anyone knows a source for more white plastic barrels please let us know!). The schedule says more peas should be in the ground by now but we'll have to be patient for dryer ground. It has been such a cool spring that perhaps the seeds would just be sitting idle in the ground anyway. I started dividing the tomato seedlings into flats of 4 packs to put under the flourescent lights along with the snapdragons and peppers. Four sweet potatoes are now in jars of water to grow shoots for planting.
February and March are the months where cooking loses it's excitement. It's when we've been eating the same routine of veggies from the root cellar and freezer for a few months and are getting hungry for the abundance and flavors of fresh veggies and fruits again. April is bringing us a few new flavors to bring us out of our cooking slump - we put our first chives from the greenhouse on baked potatoes and even mac and cheese, cooking greens abound again and garlic scallions livened up our salads. Something else that brightens up our kitchen table right now is the forsythia and pussy willows we cut a few weeks ago to force indoors. I also plant a handful of daffodils in the greenhouse for extra early blooms, their smell is heavenly. Meals always taste better when there are fresh flowers on the table.
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