Salad

Inspired by my friend, ExploreMore, I planted a salad today. Yippee. For the last few years, I've used a stone planter just outside the back door for early season salad greens. I love this little garden...

I found the planter at a Church rummage sale. It was sitting outside, where it had obviously been for quite some time, with a "Free" sign hanging on the front. Hmmm. I looked it over, loved the grape-viney style, decided I needed it, and proceeded to pull every muscle in my body trying to lift it into my car. I couldn't even budge it from its base. Not one to give up where free merchandise is involved, I approached a friendly looking man in the parking lot and asked for help. Between the two of us, we lugged the thing to the curb and loaded it into the hatchback of my tiny Saturn...I think I dragged the bumper driving home.

M put it in the back yard, and that year I planted some annuals in it, and they added some nice pinks and purples to the patio. But this planter is truly meant to be a kitchen garden. There's nothing like reaching out the sliding glass door and pinching off a bowl of green and red leaves for dinner. My Dad always had a vegetable garden, and there's just something more delicious about the food grown by your own hand. I would scour Dad's garden for ripe cucumbers caught in the chicken wire, tiny red cherry tomatoes, and long beans which I loved to pick but never ate. We would sit out on the porch and eat the tomatoes, unwashed, with salt. You had to lick them to get the salt to stick, which always struck me as a little naughty...no wonder I liked it.

I hope that E and baby M will eat my lettuce and radishes, and cherry tomatoes (if I can get them to grow back there). Maybe they'll even help me plant the seeds and weed out the dandelions. E is already showing promise in the art of weeding (see previous posts)...and there's always Daddy to help.