More spring notes from the garden

One of the nests we are watching this spring:

Aren't robins' eggs so gorgeous?

That blue . . . so hopeful.
Mesmerizing.

We are catching up from our dry winter with a downpour of spring rains - 5 inches in the past 3-4 days.  Work in the garden this weekend was muddy.  We slogged around with muck all over our boots, getting taller and more heavy-footed with each step as it compacted underfoot.

We didn't get into the garden until Sunday, as it was raining buckets all Saturday day and night.  And what a sight it was.  Totally overwhelming.  With all this rain (and last week's temps in the 80s F), everything has been growing in turbo-speed and it felt like the weeds were the most prolific of the bunch.  It was discouraging.

But we rallied and attacked and by the end of the day, things looked pretty darn good.

I weeded the peas, celery, lettuce/radishes, spinach and garlic.  Squeeze weeded the carrots, kale, collards and chard; he also prepped the cabbage bed (which involved a full-on frontal attack on mats of grass), then planted the cabbage seedlings. 

Those poor little cabbages . . . they have been sitting outside for the past week "hardening off" (AKA getting used to outside temps) and have been absolutely assaulted by the weather.  They've been drowned several times, blown-silly by fierce winds, hammered by rain, and just this past Saturday night, pelted by hail.  Squeeze had to don the rain slicker and rescue them from certain death.

We ate a yummy-delicious salad of lettuce and radishes last night, composed entirely of newly-seeded plants . . . the earliest salad on record.  (Other early salads have involved cold frames or mild-winter survivors.)

2012 Spring garden notes:

• April 2nd
• April 23rd