Garden, Garden, Snake, Garden, Lila

This past weekend I decided it didn't make sense to have a trellis in the strawberry bed and I'd rather have it one of the other beds so I pulled it out and it has a new home alongside its newly built twin.

As you can see, I also filled one box and marked the squares with old blinds.  This box is now planted with sugar snap peas, Bronze d'Amposta onions, Bloomsdale long standing spinach, and garlic.  I started tomato seeds and another batch of lettuce seeds inside.  Lettuce needs light to germinate so you just press the seeds into the soil and can actually see the seed sprout.  Magic.

The replanted strawberries survived a surprise layer of ice that wasn't predicted.  We had a serious storm this past weekend with hail but that was predicted so I covered them for that.  They've started pushing up some new growth!  I love the bright, electric yellow-green of the brand new leaves.

(Dad - you might want to skip this next part.)  After spotting what I thought was the longest worm I'd ever seen, I looked closer and realized it was a teeny baby snake.  It saw me and hid its head in a hurry so I just got one shot as it slithered away.

Over the winter I protected my strawberries with dead corn and bean stalks from last summer's garden.

When I was removing this I found some little immature, dried up corn cobs with kernels.  Any gardeners out there know if it's worth trying to remove the kernels to plant this year?

A sure sign that spring is near: tulips pushing up in our front yard.

Lila supervised the gardening work once again this past weekend.

She even dug a bit in the dirt.

Watching Lila explore the world is like exploring it all for the first time again myself.

And how do we know dirt doesn't taste good unless we try it?!