The first plants into the garden – Peas, glorious Peas!

I kissed the first little pea seed that I placed in the dirt at the base of it’s stalk. Grow, little pea! Grow!

It reminded me of the children’s book my husband recently bought for me as an early Valentine’s present. It is called Plant a Kiss and it is written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. He brought it to me at the office and told me to read it slowly, because the timing is spectacular. Especially with all the big garden plans we have this year, he knew I would appreciate the planting, watering, waiting, waiting, pouting, waiting some more, and then Bliss when it blossoms and springs to life with plenty to share! I think he might have thought he was buying it for our granddaughter, but she will have to read it with me here. I cannot part with it. We may buy one to send her, but this one is all mine. The phrasing, the poetry of it, resonates with me. Perfect in tiny words. Huge in meaning, even within tiny words. Love!

This was the first little project of our garden. We are having gorgeous sunny days, so we are taking advantage of the warm weather. We have heard from people who have been around Southern Oregon for a long time that this is known as the February Fake-out. It gets so nice, you start to think summer is here, and then it gets blustery cold again for another several weeks or months. Well, peas are supposed to be able to handle it, and 58 days from today, I could be gathering in my first harvest. We shall see!

We also cleaned out the garden shed – which doubles as a greenhouse. Joe was very instrumental there. He is our 19-year old and he is much better at getting spiderwebs and cobwebs out of plain view than either one of the younger boys or myself. Bean and I cleaned out transplanting pots and then Bean helped his dad and I shop for even more seeds.

Well, my camera must be on the blink, because this is blurry and confusing and makes it look like I have a million seed packs. They are categorized by the month in which I’m to plant them. Looks easy, right?

Ben raced around his dirt-bike track in the back field, or swung from the tree near the garden like Tarzan. He was not as much help, but he left me alone to work which is help in itself some days. Scott was straightening out the driveway with the tractor, and came over with the bobcat to help me till up the soil more than my hand tools could do. It was literally a group effort today.

Where seedlings will be sprouting for our viewing pleasure in only a matter of days!

I am delighted by the little starts in the greenhouse. Within 7-10 days we should be able to see little seedlings popping through the potting soil. What an exciting adventure this will be.

For dinner tonight, Scott made us a feast and we celebrated the sun, and the warm day, all the work we got done, and the life and times of Milo, our beloved pet doberman who sadly was put to sleep yesterday. I wrote about the experience and that was very therapeutic. Today, all the work we did, getting our hands in the dirt, that was healing too. Milo loved to dig. He would have been right in the middle of all our activity today.

As part of yesterday’s remembrance of Milo, I made a cake. I am not the chef of the family. I once added food coloring to spaghetti sauce, making everything turn a sickly shade of mauve. I have not cooked for the family dinner since. Occasionally, I help with something. I do salads. Cookies don’t usually turn out all bad. The cake – well – it was a fitting tribute to a humorous, lovely dog. Scott and the boys laughed at the cake tonight, as we were finishing the last of it after dinner. It looked as if it was made by Milo, they said.

It fell in the middle, the frosting was too hard and ripped big chunks out of the center. It was a complete disaster – and looked as if Milo may have actually had a part in baking it. They were hysterical – Cake made by a Doberman! Funny. I love that my family can move on, can move to the funny already, and not dwell in the saddness. Milo was a great dog. An amazing dog. A watchdog who would howl outside the baby’s window if the baby was crying – any baby. Milo loved his babies. He loved his family.

I love my family too, and look forward to all that we can accomplish together. We may be new to this gardening gig, but we are having fun getting it started. We know how to work together, play together, laugh and cry together. How hard could gardening be, if we’ve got all that going already?