A Taste Of Spring

The sky here in Maine is an awesome blue today.  The sun is shining even though it isn't very warm. My onion seeds have sprouted and I started six, six packs of other things.  Escarole, red and green cabbages.  Zinnias, Verbena, Gaura.  I also started some peppers.  Jalapeño, orange and bell.  I know it's early to start the peppers but they are usually so SLOW.

When the snow finally melts on the two perennial beds that warm up first, I will sprinkle poppy seeds (like pepper on a steak) with no top cover.  I usually sprinkle where I know the daffodils are.  Then the poppy seeds don't get disturbed.  They like to germinate uncovered and cold. This year I am sprinkling the blue bread seed poppies and icelandic varieties.  If I find a good package of the big opium poppy--I'll try it as well but farther from the house as it is really invasive once it gets going.

When the raised herb bed is bare of snow, I will sprinkle (in the same way) parsley, dill and cilantro in the bed.  No cover.  I "treated" the seeds with a generous few handfuls of good compost last spring and nothing came up.  The year before I sprinkled seeds and walked away.  Bountiful amounts of parsley and dill.  I have learned my lesson.  Sprinkle and walk away.

The only things I have left to start in the house will be tomatoes and fennel.  Which I will start on tax day-April 15th.  That's when the peppers should have been started as well.  I am soaking a big package of peas and plan to start them in the house, on my windowsill.  For pea shoots to cut and add to my salads.  I can also sauté them in olive oil and a touch of garlic.  I'll take a photo of the pea shoots for you as the grow. It's a fun thing to do and you need very little in the way of space or supplies.  Which is the way gardening should be.  Easy.

A gardening friend died this week. After a very painful battle with a very aggressive, full body, cancer.  She thought, at first, that she had a pulled groin muscle.  Sad to die just as Spring is coming.  Better, I think, to go just as the beauty of autumn is fading or not at all.  I remember her last visit to my workplace to select a climbing vine.  I was just about to say "cute haircut"-- and now I wish I had just blurted it out -- but I remembered the chemo at the last second and said nothing.   We had a very good time picking out a vine and some plants.  I was as optimistic as she that things would be okay.  That she would see the vine grown and climb over the wall next to her garage.  She will.  But not here on Earth.

The ebb and flow of life.  As I get older I feel the pull more strongly.  But I will not live my life any differently knowing the end is closer with every Spring.