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As you remember from last week, the Food It Yourself garden has been planted. I have now entered that super anxious time where I wait for the right kinds of green things to start popping out of the ground. I do not know why I get so impatient for this to happen. Some crops can take two weeks or longer to sprout, that is just the way some plants are. I know this well, but I am still on edge as the seeds do their own thing in their own time. As I also mentioned last week, gardening is what seems to bring out my competitive streak. What I really want is for my seeds to sprout first.

I have been surveying my planted beds daily, looking for signs of life. Earlier this week, the sweet corn started popping up. I might have actually shouted “hooray” when I saw the first one.

Just this morning I noticed sprouts popping up in other beds, too.

That a cucumber! Actually, I think there are two in this picture.

Hello gorgeous! That is a delightful string bean. My favorite thing about string beans is how they almost leap out of the ground. This morning, they had just broken the surface of the soil. This picture was taken around 6:00pm and this little beany has its first true leaves already. Talk about an exciting day.

That little guy is a zucchini. The big green guy at the top of the frame is an eggplant a friend gave me in exchange for some bee balm.

I also gave bee balm away to people I met on my town’s Facebook page. I am not usually the type to invite strangers into my back yard, but I needed to par down my bee balm and was running out of people to give it to. If you have perennials you need to thin and your town has a Facebook page, definitely consider using the page to find fellow gardeners who want to share.

Still not much action in the loofah gourd bed, but hard shelled squash have hard seeds that take time to sprout. I need to keep repeating that to myself. On a positive note, I did find a Mystery Squash sprout in the compost pile, so I moved it to the loofah gourd bed. I like a good mystery squash.

Even better, the cilantro that I thought was a lost cause last year evidently made it to seed. There are a large number of cilantro sprouts in what is now part of my strawberry bed. Of course, I did not notice that until I had seeded some cilantro in another bed. I guess I had better start looking up recipes that require cilantro. If you have any good ones, please share in the comments section.

Finally, since it has been a few weeks:

Here are the Future Egg Layers, waiting in the bathtub while Mr. Food It Yourself changes the litter in the brood box. From left to right we have Misty Coopland, Mallory Archer, Ruth Layer Ginsberg, Lucky, Agnes Featherduster Jr. (or A.J. for short) and Ellen DeHeneres. They are looking much more like chickens than chicks now. (Actually, Lucky and A.J. kind of look like baby hawks.) In a few weeks we will be letting them out into the coop. There will definitely be pictures of that.

I really try to be patient with growing things. We get such a short growing season in New England that I just want it all to happen right away. It looks like my veggies are off to a decent start, so I am at least content with the seedling situation. What’s going on in your garden? Share in the comments section.



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