Indeed, as Andrew Lee indicated last week, spring has sprung! Jake and I are excited to start gardening our new urban plot (we moved in late last July, too late to plant much at all by way of vegetables) for the season — although we will also continue to spend time out at the rural garden as well. The past few weekends we’ve been busy in the [urban] yard. We’ve got garlic coming up that we put in the ground last October, and we’ve created a few nice raised beds next to the house for planting greens (lots of greens!), cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, a few beets, and black beans! We may also, cautiously, throw out a couple of daikon seeds… but only a couple (and a couple of weeks apart, and we’ll be harvesting much — MUCH sooner than last year).
Jake also built an AMAZING compost bin in the backyard, so we’re making all of our food scraps work for us in the future — creating beautiful soil for growing beautiful veggies. Can’t wait. Incidentally, I’m reading Farm City by Novella Carpenter right now and I just adore it — compelling and funny, and best of all very inspirational and educational too! Definitely recommend it if you’re into farming, sustainable cities, urban farming, chickens, bees, vegetables, ducks, turkeys, etc. She’s got me dreaming up all kinds of ways to use our small urban plot to get the most subsistence we can out of it!
And a quick story on the pictures, speaking of farming and chickens: Soon after the small broccoli and cauliflower seedlings were in the ground (see picture 1), Sir Fleur (subject of picture 2) and his comrads made quick work of destroying them. Oh well… there are plenty more seedlings where those came from.
Picture 3 is the making of our raised beds in the city! We tore up an overgrown landscape of rose bushes, goldenrod, and some wild flowers to insert our vegetable garden — since we haven’t tested the soil, we decided it would be best to bring in some nutrient - richness for this first year of veggies, so we built raised beds. We used bricks we had around the yard (most of them had been consumed by much earth at this point and needed to be dug up anyway), laid down newspaper / cardboard to choke out the weeds and roses (hopefully), and covered them with compost from the [formerly unimpressive] pile that we inherited in the backyard (mostly wood ash), composted horse & cow manure, and a planting mix from our favorite sustainability-focused local nursery. We’ve got sprouting lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli from seed coming already! And we also invested in a grow light for the basement, so we have seedlings sprouting there, too, and growing nice and strong. My tummy is grumbling just thinking of all the goodness!
Anyway - to all the gardeners everywhere, happy spring and happy planting — here’s to a bountiful season! :)
I am pleased – no, proud – to announce that the cauliflower you see here lives in my garden. I planted it as a small seedling in November, watered it, worried about its crooked stem, covered it with a bed sheet on cold nights and now, 2 months later this golden orb of a vegetable is my reward. 
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