dew on my toes

i love to wander around the garden in the morning with a cup of coffee and check to see how everything is growing. this morning, this lovely little bird serenaded me from the telephone wire overhead.

with the rain and then the sunny day yesterday, everything is exploding with hope and possibility. if everything that has sprouted bears fruit, i may be selling squash and melons from my front steps.

the strawberries have jumped up and the pear tree has a few tentative white blooms showing.

i have trouble restraining myself when i see empty soil, so i end up tucking random seedlings into beds here and there. the half-digested compost that i used as a bottom layer in building my square-foot beds must have had some potatoes in it, because i have renegade potatoes popping up in most of my beds. i have almost totally disregarded spacing recommendations in the hopes that the extra-rich soil in the raised beds will compensate.

the herb garden by the back door is working out great, although i think the lemon balm is trying to take over the world. i am going to look up tea recipes and cut some for drying.

gardening is full of these small triumphs and discoveries that i crow over to myself and point out to the munchkins (whether they are interested or not!) and any one that happens across my blog. first-time visitors to my house are pretty much forced to tour the garden and observe the growing, although i try to restrain myself in mixed company (gardener/non-gardener) because i have noticed a certain glazed look that sets in if i really let myself go.

kate wrote quite the loveliest post the other day about some gardening blogs, including gardenopolis, and it was just so nice to feel that someone else not only got what i was talking about but was trying to do the same thing . blotanical has also been great for finding a community of like-minded folks. we are occasionally ill-informed, but never afraid to get our fingers dirty. gardening is optimism – you plant in the hopes that it will all pan out – that sun and soil and water will come together to create wonderful things from a seed. neat, eh?