Seed Fever

The Wonderbug and Truffle planted the first seeds of the season today. Little glass pots of sweet marjoram, cilantro, and Italian parsley. A few biodynamic sunflower seeds I was given in a swap. Lastly, a half-full packet of 'Shade Mix' flower seeds. We worked some compost into our inherited 'rock garden' out back for the mix. It's a pretty little bed, with a rock floe built up from flagstones and supplemented with found stones and shells, including a large, bleached conch. When we moved here, I added my terra cotta 'gazing' ball and a granite river rock I've had for an age. A weeping yaupon holly, only about five feet tall, sits over it, and a honeysuckle stands in the back corner. Each girl has a special stone there; their sitting stones, under the holly, each adjacent to a table stone. They are currently keeping pet snails there, which the Wonderbug informs me are being fattened up for the turtles, when they emerge from their winter respite, in sand pails and jars with lids fashioned from sand sieves and other, smaller pails. The snails are well fed and exercised. The girls took two wide, bowl-ish flower pots and made 'parks' so that the snails would have a place to play. One is rimmed with wood shavings, from the Professor's foray into lumberjacking, and bits of budding twigs stuck in the soil for trees. The other has a stem of lamb's ear that was accidentally pulled up root and all during the spring cleaning of the large patch behind the brick patio. After we had watered in the seeds, we returned trowels and tiny rakes to the shed, brought the glass pots of herb seeds into the kitchen, and clipped garden chives into our supper.

A picture would have showed all this fine and dandy. But tonight I needed to tell, so a telling is what I gave.