Whew. It’s been a whirlwind of a week, on the heels of a busy-busy-busy weekend involving hours in the sun and dirt. The weather was glorious, and we took full advantage of it to transplant our seedling sprouts. All 80+ of them.

Their hardening-off period was perhaps slightly rushed, but when you live in a very breezy location, it’s hard to find a spot to safely “stash” that many wee plants. {Especially since our best location had a concrete floor and is in full sun all day, and we really did not want to bake the tender greens}. To counter this, as well as offer protection from the wind, we covered [almost] every transplant with a strawberry basket {we were a few short… Time to buy more berries!}. Last year we discovered these are perfect protective covers for delicate plantlings – allowing fresh air and even sun to come in, but filtering and dramatically slowing the wind. It looks fun too, to see a row of bright colored baskets in the sun.

While planting the 50 tomatoes and 30 peppers {not to mention the squash and cucumbers and companion flowers}, we had an unexpected helper in the form of the cousins’ cat Phil {short for Philodendron; he has an equally cute sister named Fern}.

Phil definitely has a full dose of feline curiosity: not only did he walk back and forth with us each trip to retrieve things from the “staging area,” but he closely supervised the planting. As someone who has always had a cat, until getting married, it was fun to have a kitty garden buddy again – even if merely borrowed for the day.

Believe it or not, but we still had plants left over after planting/filling our open garden spaces. Our families got to divvy up the rest, to add to their own garden patches. And now, we wait… Again. This at least is a more fun stage of waiting: getting to watch everything sink down roots and grow, grow, grow.

Every day there’s a new discovery: the strawberries are really starting to produce berries, and we just picked our first ripe one! Also, the peas. Can we all take a moment to appreciate the gorgeousness of these blooms? And our first tiny peas! I love this time of year.

Have no fear: while the garden is growing, there are plenty of other projects to keep us busy, as well as so very many books to read, and you can be sure I’ll share the adventures.