I am One with the raincoat.

I'm pretty glad now that I took all these pictures of the garden's progress before our part of the country became soaked to the bone.

My neighbors tell me that NorCal is weird because our bulbs start coming up in January.

Because now it's been raining for about five solid days and I'm trying really hard to understand how people can endure places like Seattle (Hi, Chelle!) and Portland and anywhere else I don't know specifically that also experiences long periods of Rain Only weather.

It's downright soggy around here, y'all, and my run Tuesday morning was as much like swimming as any of my summers growing up except it was about 30 degrees cooler and I was wearing long pants. Or, more specifically, tights.

Ugh, tights. Soggy wet running tights. Just let yourself imagine that for a minute. It's truly gross.

Anyway, it's still raining here, which is great because it means my millions of bulbs and plants are getting their thorough soaking and, you know, instead of forgetting about all the photos I took with my new camera I can share them with you while also remembering what it's like to be outside without a layer of GoreTex between myself and the world.

Yay, it was a glorious time.

This is a flower on the peas. Can you fucking believe that? Where do they find the time?

And I'm really pretty impressed with these winter-type vegetables as they're all growing and producing flowers and not dying even though I was sure that our frost and short days would mean certain death to little green things, which it evidently does not.

That is a small broccolini. Which is why I believe they're called broccolini. The -ini means they're small. In some language. I think.

What it may mean, however, is that little green things may not progress past the Little Green Things Phase because, while our last frost date may be nearly two months off, I have already accepted delivery of the summer's garden seeds and YOU KNOW that once March 1st rolls around it's going to be Tough Shit time for little green things that aren't producing food yet.

Garlic, peas and kohlrabi. All in a race against time and my shovel.

Sort of sad, yes, that some of these plants might not make it to fruition in my race to get priority items like tomatoes and melons into the garden, but that is the plight of the winter vegetable in my NorCal garden - you have to be fast-growing or high priority to stand a chance. If you don't fall into one of those categories, well, then you must make due with my limited patience.

 Nothing is more high-priority than the kumquats. I mean, obviously.

 Poor things.

And if you're fava beans, with the specific purpose of replenishing the soil after a summer of The Great Corn Destruction, then you can grow as fast as you want but once you get to bean-setting, I will get to bean-turning-under, which makes some people like my neighbors very sad. And, as of when I took these pictures last weekend, there are definitely beans are on the horizon.

Or so says the Money Chicken, that sly bastard.

I guess we can queue the neighborhood howls of misery and sadness now because the favas are not long for this world.

But you won't hear any bitching from me. I mean, yes, technically I do experience a single moment of "Oh, but what if I just let one of these plants put out some beans for me?" before I ruthlessly turn them under and let them put some juice back in the dirt, but it's nothing a reminder of crop failure due to poor soil can't remedy.

I can't have that again. I nearly had to run headfirst into traffic. Tomato Sadness - it's a real problem.

So, I have already got my eye on the shovel and have warned my fava-loving neighbors that, once again, I will ruin their lives by dispatching my fava plants before their prime, and no one has called CPS on me so I think we're good.

Not that CPS could do much since I've been told by some crazy people that plants are not children, but I am choosing to still see it as a good sign.

And now that I've told you all about the winter garden I'm planning to destroy in the name of summer vegetables, you can begin preparations for Adopt a Crop 2010 in which you will be contemplating melons.

Yes, doesn't that sound fun? Contemplating melons.

I'll leave you with that thought. Naughties.