Cold Weather Crops with a side of Ichthyology

Many folks, this time of year, get very excited about The Final Four....us? we get excited about The Final Frost. 'cause that means our cold weather crops can go in the ground.
Aside from the stuff that's been in since last season...garlic, asparagus, some perennial herbs, and onions that we put in 2 weeks ago....we put our early Spring crops in today. We planted:

Strawberries (our patch was looking a bit sparse...I guess a bunch of plants didn't make it through the winter)
Spinach
Kale
Swiss Chard
Lettuces
Carrots
Snap Peas
Broccoli

There's this weird aesthetic that comes from planting stuff from seed....you look over the gardens after you just sowed...and it looks no different than it did before you sowed...still just flat dirt...but now there's this life under there....this hope...this tiny little seed (have you ever seen a carrot seed?? those things are about microscopic!)..in which some amazing chemical reactions (and a few miracles) will take place inside of
that eventually will yield sustenance for my family...it's actually a pretty amazing thing to comprehend.

I get giddy thinking about 2 weeks or so from now...when those tiny little seeds have germinated....where their roots have formed and headed South and their stalks have somehow found North and pushed themselves upwards into the sun....where leaves form and absorb the sun's energy....while roots absorb nutrients from the soil....to grow and mature and provide EXACTLY the nutrients our bodies need to sustain life. I can't imagine that there are many atheist gardeners. I don't see how anyone can watch a seed become a fruit yielding plant and not see God's Hand in that transformation.

It's funny about gardeners....once you've got crops in the ground, you are so much more in tune with nature and weather and what's going on around you....It's raining tonight....which I'm psyched about....I didn't connect my hoses and sprinklers and water my seeds today because I knew it was going to rain...and I know that it's going to rain again early next week...which will be perfect for my seeds to come alive. Sun, heat, rain, dry spells, wet spells, water tables, paths of the sun, birds, rabbits, critters, wind, shade...all of these seemingly mundane things take on so much more importance when you rely on a combination and understanding of all of them to help your crops along. I think back to the early settlers, who had literally life or death riding on the success of their crops....they would have cut off their pinkie finger in exchange for weather.com, right?

Anyway...here's to hoping for a good crop yield this year. I got a couple pictures from today's planting (the kids didn't stay out too long...it was Coooooold today):




Adding in some strawberries to the bare areas of our patch.


Looking foreground to background:
The first garden will be tomatoes come May
Behind that..Spinach
then Carrots
then asparagus/strawberries

Next...since Gavin has become such a pro fisherman in the last 4 days.....we've decided to photograph each different type of fish that he catches...so's that we can learn a bit about them. Here's the different types that he's landed so far:


Bluegill.....some might call it a Pumpkin Seed...or a kivver


Sunfish...or "Sunny"...also called a Kivver by some.


Golden Shiner. I don't remember ever landing these as a kid....in fact, we used to buy shiners to use as bait...they were only an inch or two long, though. I'm not sure how or when these guys got introduced to our pond....but they are cool looking, no? (Ivy thinks so.)

That's about the size of the fishing tally so far....we spotted a MOTHER of a bass the other day, but he swam right past our hook.

Now, for no reason other than she's cute as nails....the girl:


Epic hairdo on this kid...I've never seen anything like it.

We're having a blast getting dirty in the garden and on the dock...hope you are too.