Garden Update--Winter Edition

More snow is forecast for today, more single-digit temperatures for tomorrow. So why in God's name am I doing a garden update now, when winter is quite obviously still kicking our asses? Because the seeds have been ordered. Wheee!

The MiL and I sat down at the dining room table on Sunday and . . . made a big ole mess.

That right there is hundreds of pounds of food . . . assuming I can get them all in the ground and keep those goddamn rabbits from eating it all.

First I sorted the seeds, tossing aside the flower seeds, because pfffft, flowers. I want the edible stuff. Flowers are the MiL's gig. Then I threw out, at the MiL's direction, some really old seeds that would be a waste of time to plant, because spinach seeds from 2005? Are not going to germinate. And then, I took note of what we had left. We had a lot left. Including far too many packets of cabbage and pumpkin seeds. Really now, why do we have four different packets of cabbage seeds? Who the hell plants, and eats, that many cabbages? No need to buy cabbage seeds, then. Noted.

Then I sorted these packets into Seeds to Be Started Indoors, Seeds to Be Sown Directly in the Ground, and Seeds We Might Not Have Room For*. And THEN, I wrote down a schedule for the seeds that need to be started indoors (like hot peppers and eggplants get planted first, around the beginning of March, then bell peppers at the end of March, leeks at the first of April, etc.).

And then we could FINALLY actually make the lists of seeds we needed to buy. There were quite a lot we needed to buy. We had no lettuce seeds, no beet seeds, no corn, radishes, peas . . . well, you get the idea. We ended up ordering from four different companies (Pinetree, John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, Harris, and Burpee--I always giggle to myself when I see this name) to get all the varieties we wanted.

Seed ordering is such an inherently hopeful activity. It's a sign that winter really WILL be over sometime, that it will eventually be warm enough to plant and grow green (and purple, and red, and yellow . . .) things again. I'm always filled with giddy optimism at the sight of all those seeds. It's the only time of year when the garden is nothing but a joy, because, of course, no actual WORK has to be done yet.

We just won't think of all the digging and planting and weeding and watering and sore muscles to come. No, for now, we'll just focus on the seeds and their promise of spring. Amen.

* The MiL actually said during this process that our garden is TOO SMALL. Have you SEEN the size of our garden? If it were any bigger, I'd need a tractor and a couple of laborers to deal with it all.