Adopt a Crop update: No promises

Look close. It's there.

As you all know, I'd like to have my garden planted already so that I'd be all lined up and growing as I was last year at this time. Unfortunately, the weather's been too cool for that and I've been forced to wear tights on my morning runs (BARF) and also forgo the garden planting a while longer.

Although I *may* give in this weekend and get to planting because I have no patience.

After that I may also have no plants, because it will certainly freeze and kill everything, but I think we know how impulsive, impatient and unreasonable I can be, so it's likely that I'll go out and plant some seeds this weekend just so I can have the pleasure of standing next to the garden, wiggling my fingers over the soil like a sorceress and screaming "GROW, MY BEAUTIES" like a woman off her nut.

Perhaps my neighbors are missing this variety of comic relief in their lives, so it's possible that my backyard antics are in demand from others than just my nutty self.

Anything's possible.

Given the delayed direct sow gardening however, I did start some seeds indoors. And, miracle of miracles, some of them are starting to sprout, even given the 40 below status of our breakfast nook/tiny seedling nursery/off-kitchen storage/dog dining area/apron house/spare kitchen seating area/garden library.

And the big news here is that the Adopted Crop of 2009, Lemon Cucumbers, are among the first sprouters.

No sign of the bean or corn seeds. Guess they don't appreciate growing in trash. Prima donne.

So, yes, technically the basil sprouted first, being all overachievey and what not, but one of the cukes poked its neck out this morning during Inspection Time and so now it's official - Adopt a Crop 2009 is underway.

That's right, neck first. Sorta weird now that I think about it that way.

In the sense that one of the seeds is sprouting and maybe *MAYBE* it will grow happily in its little recycley greenhouse until it has a couple sets of leaves and then maybe *MAYBE* I will harden it off properly (biggest Maybe of them all, really) and then maybe *MAYBE MAYBE* (this word has lost all meaning now) it will get planted, grow, produce fruits that ripen and get harvested and turned into pickles for one of y'all to enjoy as an adopted pickle visitor in the form of chips.

Phew. That's a lot of maybes BUT STILL, it could happen.

And that's all I need at this point. The point where it's 60 degrees outside but I'm wearing a sleeveless dress anyways because it SHOULD be spring and things SHOULD be growing and I SHOULD be in flip-flops day in and day out already, but sadly I'm not.

Token California comment here: It's OK because we need the rain.

To get through these MAYBE and SHOULD BE times, I do things like sow seeds indoors, wear sleeveless dresses in cold weather, make cold salads for dinner (Hi Bubba, red cabbage coleslaw tonight!), listen to Spring Training baseball while screaming at it like it's regular season and basically pretend my ass off that it's summer already.

So, one could say, that I'm something of a faker right now. But as long as the seeds are coming up in their recycley greenhouse, my sanity level will remain just at Criminally Insane levels.

Now is not a safe time to visit.