Folks are posting this week on the theme of beginnings. Anywhere their minds may wander from there is allowable. The word “beginning” sure lends itself to mind-wandering on my part…or perhaps that’s the ninja dance party in my belly these days causing the wandering…
It is the beginning of a new year, after all, and the beginning of a new season’s garden plotting. The mail box has shifted from holiday cards to seed catalogs. My drool-inducers have shifted from mac ‘n cheese to photograph after photograph of plant porn. (Ok, I lied, I will still drool over homemade mac n’ cheese…) My dining room table has let go of the wrapping paper and ribbon station and moved on to the inventorying of current stock.
The beginning ebbs and flows. Is the beginning the seed catalogs arriving? Or when I begin drafting on graph paper? Or when I pour the seed starter from the bag into the trays and smooth out the surface?
For today, let’s say the beginning is pulling out my seed stock and reacquainting myself with old favorites and rekindling excitement over new experiments to come.
Things I learned from this beginning? For still not liking to eat tomatoes (I try to like them every year, I do!) I sure have a lot of tomato seeds…*cough* twenty-three varieties…*cough*
plumdirt 
Thanks for the reminder – I should do the same before ordering more!
I didn’t used to…hence so many seeds! I don’t know that’ll I’ll be ordering any at all this year, unless DH was serious about building a potato tower for some purple potatoes.
What is dancing inside of you will be so much fun next year as you ponder growing with your child…to nurture a “beginning” with your new little gardener:-)
I love it ” plant porn”…lol…sometimes I feel like I am consumed by all the possibilities and it is neat we can start over each year!:-)
Mornings on a blanket with the munchkin in the garden sound pretty much like heaven, I think 🙂
trust me it is…my two oldest are having little babies, and my baby moved out this past summer…seasons of life, and yours is one of the best seasons! Enjoy it because it does pass quickly, even if it feels like forever at times:-)
🙂
Such fun digging through seed packets and planning. You are very adventurous, given your impending little arrival. Your garden will most likely have to perform without you. I’m going to have to start from scratch; a the seeds I saved last year disappeared somewhere between moves last year. Bummed. I hate starting over with untried varieties.
And this time, I’m using grow lights. No more leggy maters and cukes. I want good strong leafy varieties to plant in March. Grow ’em, girl!
I keep thinking about grow lights but have yet to take the plunge. Thankfully DH is able to take an easier schedule pre-delivery and post-delivery, so between the timed sprinkler system and that, hopefully we’ll be able to harvest and let nature do what nature does otherwise 🙂
That’s too bad about the lost seeds. Hopefully they’re just hiding in a random corner and reappear soon!
I think it is so funny that you have 23 different kinds of tomato seeds and don’t like tomatoes. I guess there is no sense asking you what your favorite varieties are. 🙂
Ha! But I do have favorite varieties. I love the Chadwick Cherry, as it’s a stubborn one in our heat – lots of fruit, 14 foot vines, and can set a second crop for October harvest if I keep it alive through August. Zapotec tomatoes are fun for their pink wrinkly shape, yellow pear seem to hop off the stem and into my hand, and Black Prince are the largest ones I’ve managed to grow, so they get a favorite spot. (Large tomatoes usually explode in the heat before ripening, or if they’re a Brandywine variety, simply never set fruit for how quickly we heat up in the spring.) This year will be my first attempt at paste tomatoes…perhaps I’ll have more favorites come harvest time!
There you go…that is terrific. Growing up in Texas, I’m all too familiar with the heat. Good luck in the garden this year.