spring garden planning hooray

Eva and I spent some time outside today uncovering the wood violets and picking through the garden. The oak leaves from fall and winter pile up on the violets and surrounding flowers and I generally wait until early spring to remove them. I was enjoying the smells and sounds of this early springtime. Red wing blackbirds. Geese practicing flight overhead. Moss covered bricks. The trickle and squish of water in the lawn. Earthworms forced to the surface, languishing under bricks and rocks surprised by Eva's prying! We listened to the water creep along in the mud while we checked out some new purple crocuses blooming by the back fence. The squish and trickle. The ground so dense with moisture. There is nowhere to step that doesn't bring puddles to the surface.

From the garden I pulled more carrots and onions to mix with the kale, chard and collards from my CSA basket this week. The chives are up. The kale is growing. We found the sweet pea seeds we saved from last year's plants. I am hoping to plant those in the next couple of days. I still need to buy either pea plants or pea seeds and am wondering if I will raise my ban on sugar snap peas this year. Last year I planted only sweet peas and English snap peas. I admit to missing the sugar snap peas at least some of the time but am wondering if I get enough from my CSA to satisfy those infrequent cravings. Right now I am all about greens and plan to plant more mesclun mix to replace the plants that died in our cold snap last December. Salad salad salad. I love to dream of salad.

The slugs are daring me to plant more primroses in the spot where the calendula used to grow. (The also died out in the December cold this year which is strange because they are usually so hardy. It must have been the timing and duration of that particular cold snap.) Today in particular I feel that I owe it to them. I accidentally stepped on a slug this afternoon and am sad to say that while it was not good for me, it was worse for the slug. I hope it was quick. Do you believe I have never intentionally killed a slug? Tis true. Eva talked to me about how it was quick and painless for the slug and how he was happy that it was at least me who accidentally stepped on him rather than one of those other people who might purposely killed him with salt. Yep. My daughter for sure. Later she did demonstrations on the kitchen floor of what it would feel like to be stepped on and die. Poignant. If I plant enough primroses, I do believe there might be enough for the slugs and me to enjoy. They haven't touched the ones coming up in the garden, for instance. Something about the primroses I plant out front that is particularly attractive to the slugs.