Spring slowly comes

My seedlings are growing like crazy! I love how they're all reaching toward the window. Those big guys in the back are zucchini. The one lonely eggplant sprout up front gives me hope. I didn't think they were going to come up at all but now I can see the hint of a few more just under the soil.

I'm nervous and excited about this year's garden. I've never started from seed indoors before. I learned today that I should ruffle the seedlings with my hands so they grow strong stalks. I never in a million years would have thought to manhandle my seedlings like that.

Very soon I'll have to assume the role of plant god and decide out of the two seedlings per section which shall live and which shall die. This causes me much angst.

I've got a ton more seeds waiting to be sown outdoors and that's the part I'm super nervous about. If they don't come up I'll have to go buy plants at the farmer's market with my tail between my legs. Dan has hop rhizomes in the fridge right now and I have no idea where we're going to plant them -- if we plant them. The original plan was to give them to my dad.

I've also got to construct some trellises. I'm hoping to have peas like mad this year because, really, there's nothing in the world like eating a peapod fresh off the vine. Have to find some bamboo poles and some twine.

I'm really diving head first into this whole gardening thing. Last year I let the front yard get overgrown with grass and weeds because I was just so overwhelmed by it all. The guy who live here before us was a professional landscaper and did all this fancy stuff with boulders and hostas in the front. The hostas and the one daylily are the only plants I recognize and I can't honestly tell if the rest is weeds or decorative groundcover. I'm going to have to do some research. I managed to successfully split a couple of hostas last year and I'm looking forward to it again this year when they get a little bigger. Right now they're in the alien pod-looking shoot stage and I'm afraid to touch them because it looks like tiny gremlins will pop out and eat my fingers.

I'm also planning on planting fruit bushes in the front because have you seen the price of raspberries and blueberries right now? Holy shit.

And then there's the matter of the side of the house... there are a few tulips there (and a few where just a single solitary leaf comes out of the ground and nothing else) but that's it. I keep forgetting/not having money to buy bulbs in the fall so I'm thinking of filling in with wildflowers or something. We'll see.

I'm actually enjoying gardening more than I thought I would. I had anxiety about it because I've killed more houseplants and cacti than is right by nature, and I've been afraid that if I killed any more plant life I'd be carried away by fairies and put into plantkiller jail and raped by a hydrangea or something. But I've found that as long as the plants aren't in the house and if I don't touch them or look at them or think about them too much they do OK.