The spinach is up and so ae many lettuce seedlings, arugula, cress, radishes.  We have transplanted into our gardens two kinds of broccoli, three kinds of red cabbage, cilantro, bok choi, some leaf lettuce and Italian and curly parsleys.  We’ve just put in shallots, leeks, two kinds of beets, parsnips, summer lettuce and Swiss chard.  I planted 3 Siberian iris in front of the house.

I transplanted calendula I started in late February into one of the three new narrow raised beds that are for attracting pollinators. Then I planted borage seeds between the fading yellow crocuses. It’s gorgeous out there with hundreds of daffodils in bloom, near the house and down the hill; the Cornelian cherry [actually a yellow dogwood bush], intense blue scillas, blue anemones, and a few snowdrops.  I planted pansies – the ones with faces— in two long pots on the front porch.  The roses are leafing out.   I see unfolding buds on the sugar maples. Birds in their mating plumage are active and sometimes very verbal. The spring peepers are celebrating their orgies in vernal ponds.  We hear their high itched calls every evening. 

I love spring and fall the best of all the seasons. I’m not at all sure I don’t enjoy spring the most.  Every day something new to plant, every day something new leafs out.  New birds arrive.  Willow has become fascinating by the sunporch – still glassed in, no screens yet, but it sticks out into the woods and always there is some animal or bird or insect activity to watch,  even a deer and her fauns and yearlings. Of course grey and red squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys – males spreading their tails wide, she watches them all, her tail lashing  Sometimes she makes those chirping noises.  She also stares out various windows, although all winter, she paid little attention to the out-or-doors.

I have to endure a root canal next week.  I also had two chipped teeth. A friend gave me a box of chocolates that either someone had given her last year or the store had not sold it in that long.  As soon as I bit into the first chocolate, two teeth, one upper, one lower, chipped. It wasn’t painful but the back molar sure is. I haven’t been sleeping much because when I lie down, it lights up and screams.

Because of the tooth, we didn’t see any friends this weekend.  Instead, we’re outside in the garden as much as we can.  It feels so good.  Now only one sic-pack of Brussels sprouts is in the greenhouse on an upper shelf.  It’s the last of the hardy seeds I started inside.  Now all the heating pads are occupied by tender crops – tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, marigolds, pumpkins, cosmos, zinnias, cucumbers, summer savory, basil of three kinds, majoram.  In our storeroom on the sink, I’ve started sunflowers, yellow summer square and patty pans. The latter are my favorite nonzuke summer squash. I‘ll start zucchini Sunday.  That’s the last of the seeds starting in the storeroom this spring.  in July and August, I’ll start more seeds for succession planting, but now it’s time for the seeds that go directly into the ground – if they’re hardy.  We won’t get to the pole beans, winter squashes until May, when all the tender things have to come out of the greenhouse yesterday.  It’s always a mad rush when the wather turns reliably warm.

The next thing I have to do is start dahlias, begonias and calla lilies in the greenhouse.  I plant them in the pots they are going to live in, some deep and round, some long and shallow.