Inch By Inch

It may be that spring has arrived with the equinox. Today was a lovely spring day with warm temperatures and plenty of sun. By afternoon, I was ready to head to the garden and get started with the planting. But since it was so nice out, I kept stopping to talk to neighbors.

Not quite American Gothic, but we tried.

Stan waved me down because he knew I had garden tools. His mother in law had sent his wife an azalea for her birthday. Now Linda is off working somewhere like Afghanistan or Iraq probably and won’t be back before Stan forgets to water the azalea or their cats eat its leaves off. So he was looking to plant it outside.

When I came back from the garden, he HAD planted it, among some other azaleas, which may have expired in our extended and mean winter.

I lent him the fork and headed off to the garden where I saw more people to talk with. Honestly, it was as though we had all been away somewhere and now were back. When I finally got to my garden, I pulled some dead kale stalks, bagged some leaves and was ready to plant. If you recall, we really cleaned up all the gardens in the fall, laying down manure and compost, so all I needed was my trusty plan and map, which I had packaged with the appropriate seeds. Except not for my garden. I had brought seeds for the small and large Plot Against Hunger gardens. Sometimes a stressful week at work can just wipe out my focus…

There’s nothing like a little hands-on, present-oriented work.

So I planted the small garden, using the map from my plans and the seeds I’d packed up with it. I’ve also bought two sizes of row markers. One set is the tiny ones you see in the picture above. The others you’ll see when I plant my garden and the larger Plot garden, which Jane and I will do tomorrow.

Jane readied the large Plot garden for planting on Tuesday and took this picture. Looks like it needs some seeds!