This morning I spend about an hour and a half requesting seed catalogs and starting to dream of greener times. We got quite a bit of snow here last night and after shoveling a bit this morning dreaming of summer was just what I needed.
This past November my boyfriend and I moved into a nice house with a beautiful back yard, and I'm ready to start a garden. I drool over the fresh veggies I dream of harvesting and processing this fall, but the sparkle this morning comes from all the colors and flowers I'm imagining in my backyard!
I do have some priorities though:
1. Crocuses. These are already in. I planted them in late November. It was almost too late, but I did it anyway. These come up as the snow melts and if you plant them directly into the lawn, they can be the best little bits of joy before you can really spend the entire day outside without getting a chill. Don't worry, by the time the grass is high enough to mow, they should be done blooming. Mom and I planted bulbs on a hill to one side of my driveway which seems fitting as I helped her plant a bunch in her yard earlier in the fall. I'm looking forward to this bit of color come spring and adding more next fall. Someday I hope my yard will look like my grandmother's. Full bloom at the first sign of spring with grass to follow only after these small hardy flowers have had their say.
2. Asparagus. This is the best spring vegetable. It is crisp and wild and tastes of green promises when plucked in the early spring when everything else is still just emerging. Asparagus also takes something like five years to propagate in a garden setting. I want to get it in now. The truest form of setting roots and settling down as I have to trust the plant to take its time, and I have to trust myself to be here when it's finally ready to eat.
3. Rhubarb. I'm a true Wisconsinite and I feel it is necessary to have a clump of rhubarb for at least one pie or crisp in the spring. I would also love to start making a shrub to enjoy all year round (I fell for Siren Shrub's short release rhubarb flavor). This is a nod to my youth, in which I was the one to insist on making a crisp each year because this flavor is unlike anything else and handling the stem and leaf was just too much fun.
4. Zinnias. These are my favorite flower. They bloom around my birthday and just keep blooming with all sorts of beautiful colors. They grow well in containers, and they are something I have planted from seed even when living in apartments, but I can't wait to expand my planning this year. You can never have too much color or too many zinnias.
The rest will come. I'm sure there will be tomatoes and zucchini. I've already ordered sweet pea flowers and I'd love to try my hand at dahlias and ranunculus and so much more! The four above though are my promises. The pinky-swears I made to myself back in college when I didn't even have the space for a container of vegetables. These four plants in my garden mean I have found myself a home.
