picking our dinner.

My intention of keeping a record of my garden's early progress in photos and text basically blew up over the past couple of weeks, and I haven't posted about what's going on. Spring sprung early (and rainily, if that's a word), so here we are at April 27 and EVERYTHING is in full bloom. The 80-degree weather over the past four days has certainly helped.

I picked the first leaves of arugula and lettuce from the coldframe just over a week ago and dressed them simply with lemon juice, olive oil and cracked pepper. That's the new standard for salad Chez Mooth; we've enjoyed that a couple of times over the past week.

Funny: The mache seeds I planted when I first set out the coldframe, the ones that never did anything, the ones I thought were duds ... well, they've just now germinated. Just goes to show you: patience is a virtue in the garden. (As an aside: I'm not entirely sure what mache is; it's also called lamb's lettuce or corn salad, and it's supposedly kind of sweet and a nice addition to the salad bowl. It looked pretty in the seed catalog.)

The coldframe will probably retire from the garden this weekend. Three weeks ago, I planted four rows of arugula and lettuce in the other half of the vegetable bed, and those rows are all coming in nicely. I'll need to thin them well (I was rather heavy-handed with the seed, and I spilled a bunch).

Yesterday, I transplanted the small nasturtium plants from the coldframe into a terra cotta pot for the herb garden (later, when it gets really hot, I'll move them to the porch). I told Rob, "I think this is the first time I've ever started flowers from seed and transplanted them." Wouldn't you know: when we came back from golf that afternoon, the plants had literally wilted in the sun. I hope they make it!