Starting to Garden

It's December. The Christmas tree is up; lights are twinkling; carols are being sung; stocking are being hung. Home Depot is filled with evergreens and poinsettias. At the old house, the tomatoes finally succumbed to the frost. Even on a sunny day, the air is crisp with a slight tang of wood smoke and dead leaves.

The rest of the country would call this "autumn". Here, we call it "winter".

And in the midst of decorating the house with Santas and pine, I started my winter garden.

It's a little early.

Or a little late.

Depends on how you look at it.

Still, I planted broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and garlic on the terrace at the edge of my new garden. I bought hyacinth bulbs half off, hoping to plant them around the front of the house. Most important, I have a bed ready to plant.

I recruited my friend Matt, who expressed an interest in learning to garden, to help with the heavy lifting and building the potato boxes. And yes, an interest in gardening can be defined as, "You garden? That's cool."

In exchange for lunch and beer, he helped me haul peat moss, compost, and vermiculite to one of the sixteen square foot beds I brought over from the other house. After last year's broken string disaster, I hammered together a little grid to place over the top. He drilled and screwed together the framework for the potato boxes that will soon house sweet potatoes and Yukon golds.

And I drew a schematic of what I want to grow:

Peas, sweet and plump, ready in a couple months to be unzipped and popped into little mouths. Carrots, tender and delicious, needing the nip of frost in the air to sweeten. Leeks and parsnips to make into soups and chowders. Radishes and lettuce to help with that New Year's Resolution. You know the one.

It's a tiny bit early for most everything. I usually start in February, hitting my stride in late March. Still, I'm lucky enough to live in an area where I don't technically need to take a break from gardening. Usually I need the break to tear down the old plants, to overturn the earth, to prepare for the next year.

In this case, I missed two months of gardening, harvesting, cutting back. I let everything run wild and go to seed. I took my break already and, as a result, am experiencing the itchy fingers, the slightly mad urge to look through my books, to plot and plan, that I usually have in January.

I'm okay with that. It distracts me from the upcoming holidays and everything that still needs to be done.

And it already looks so pretty when I stare at it out my bedroom window.