How To Start Your Own Seedlings

Fill peat pots or egg cartons or even eggshells with sterilized soil. Try to do this in a spot where it doesn't matter if you spill.

Gather your seed packets. Now is a good time for starting cold-season crops. We did lots of kale and spinach and lettuce. The sugar snap peas, carrots and radishes will wait a few weeks until we can direct-sow them outside.

Carefully place three seeds in each place. Mama labeled the rows.

Remember that you forgot to break up clumps in the soil. Forget that you already had some seeds in there. Abandon all plans of rows and call it "mixed salad greens."

Repeat every two weeks for the next eight weeks so you'll have lots of salad all spring.

Some ideas of what to do while you're waiting for your seeds to sprout:

Roast a marshmallow on the bonfire that the neighbors so kindly lit.

Take a few walks. Slow down.

Make friends with the trike now that it's not covered in snow and ice any longer.

***

I know many of you are snowed in and iced in and just plain freezing in your area of the world. Here in our neck of the woods, it's been chilly at night, just 29 degrees, but crisp and gorgeous each morning followed by sunshine and false spring warmth all afternoon.

The daffodils are poking up their heads and the horses are rolling in the mud. The kids are itching to be outside. The temperature reaches the high 50s each afternoon and if you sit in a south-facing window the warmth is intoxicating.

Quietly, quietly the hope of a new season is sneaking up on us. Once we taste a little baby spinach salad it'll be confirmed: winter doesn't last forever.