the march 2020 garden ~ a gentle beginning.

The stay at home mandate due to the Covid 19 pandemic has allowed our family some extra time to prepare our garden beds for the year. Leaves have been cleared, mulched has been laid and an additional bed for growing potatoes is in the works. We realized that if we want an abundance of both tomatoes AND potatoes we need more room. Our potatoes lasted through last November for us, nothing really to brag about but it was the greatest abundance for us yet so it meant something to us! However, I had an embarassingly small supply of tomatoes in the freezer for the winter, and as my son will tell you, canned tomatoes just aren't the same for spaghetti, pizza and soups. He repeated this more than once over the past months, so I know it matters for him to have home grown tomatoes and that warms my heart! 

My children really do know that growing your own produce is best, and even though our growing space is relatively small my goal is to use it even more wisely this year to break our record of pounds grown in a year. Is 750 pounds too lofty of a goal? Maybe. But it's the number I'll be reaching for. 

The weather has been somewhat ideal with a mixture of sunny and rainy days. The world is turning green and we have the delicate-but-mighty bloom of violets, redbuds, magnolias, bleeding heart, grape hyacinths, daffodils, forsythias, quince and creeping phlox to complement. This is the sweet time in the garden! Digging into the soil, planting seeds of hope. Even our new garden helper, a Springerdoodle named Moonlight Sonata, is enjoying the flowers! She isn't necessarily destructive, however, she is learning that my vegetable beds are somewhat sacred, learning that they are off-limits, and digging is quite the infraction. 

The flowers of late winter

and early spring

occupy places in our hearts 

well out of proportion 

to their size.

Gertrude S. Wister