Garden update

I've been fighting depression again lately, and a touch of illness, but --

I get to plant things today!

I just got a plant order in from Richter's Herbs in Canada, a combination of prosaic (Italian parsley and lavender), intriguing (nepitella, which tastes a bit like an oregano-mint) and fun (scented leaf geraniums). Most of these will go on "the hill", a dirt-covered rip slope whose sparseness actually duplicates the origins of many of the herbs we love.

I also have to harden off my indoor seedlings so they can be planted without sun damage. Tomatoes and peppers and flowers and more herbs! 

I will probably plant my roots and greens this week, which is the breathing room between end of semester and internships/online class/other things I need to do. Then I will spend an hour each morning making sure I give my plants the attention they deserve -- weeding, picking produce, etc. 

Some of the weeds we will eat. Lamb's quarters taste better than spinach when cooked. I considered eating the poke sallet that keeps infringing on the shady spot I want to transform into a hosta garden, but I just can't warm up to a green that you have to cook three times over to make it non-toxic. I've also not cooked dandelion greens this year -- by the time I notice them, they've flowered, and they're too bitter to eat.

The other thing I should mention -- everything I plant is edible, one part or another. This year there will be an exception -- I am putting in a moon garden by request of my husband. The moon garden will be romantic but deadly, which sounds like a stock antihero in fiction, doesn't it?

 I am hoping the summer hours and the gardening will get me out of my depression. I don't tell you a lot about what the depression is like, so you'll have to take my words for it. Wish me luck.