Planting Summer

I was an enthusiastic, if not technically perfect, gardener in California. When my house was built, years before I was around, they hauled in lot of dirt for some important construction reason. The happy result for me was I had better soil than all my neighbors and a very verdant garden. Oh, yeah, those were the days.

I grew my own seedlings every year. In late February or early March I would haul out all my salvaged seed trays, place them all over my cement slab like a giant puzzle, and plant way more than I needed. After a few years, I started selling the extra seedlings at a little stand at the end of my driveway. It was a nice racket.

The last two summers I have been without a garden of any substantial size. Summer before last, it didn't work out to put in a garden because of personal reasons, and last summer I was drifting around from pillar to post and had nowhere to plant one. So I have a serious head of gardening steam built up here, people. But now I have to face the challenge of re-learning all the experiential knowledge I've picked up through the years, on soil of unknown qualities.

The previous owners of my parents' house were great gardeners and left 3 bags of seed trays hanging from the rafters of their basement. Needless to say, those three bags are now at my house as I try to catch up with my perfidious sister who planted her seeds a whole week before I got mine in!



Still way, WAY too cold for seedlings outside, besides that at the moment we are having another blizzard and they would get blown into Montana. So my little babies are set up on a couple of folding tables in front of my living room window. They are only a day old and not very impressive to look at yet, but I am confident they will soon burst forth with little green sentinels of spring. At least they better, or I'm going to have to sneak over and pull up all Noni's while she's sleeping!