It's been a minute since my last post and to be honest, I don't really know why.  I guess I just didn't have anything interesting to talk about - which is funny because I always have something to talk about.  The weather is finally starting to be "nice," so I've been enjoying that this past week.  It's wonderful to finally have the windows open, to hear the birds chirping back and forth, flitting about between trees.  Unfortunately, for me at least, one of the downfalls of living in the "city" I don't see much diversity in the way of birds.  The highlight is the occasional purple finch, if you're lucky.  Usually its a gang of house sparrows, a horde of starlings, a handful of grackles and a smattering of crows, blue jays and mourning doves.  Boring.  But, finally being able to hear them, and enjoy a slight breeze through the open window after 5 months of cold and quiet, I'll take what I can get.

Most of my seeds that I started a few weeks back are kicking ass.  Some are a little lanky, but I think once it warms up a bit more and I can move them outside during the day, they will perk up.  I try to not use much in the way of "fancy" equipment when starting seeds.  I figure, our ancestors didn't have heat lamps and grow lights and fancy liquid fertilizer and store bought dirt, so why do I need that stuff?  My tomatoes have already moved on to their second set of leaves and I think this coming week I'm going to get out and start my kale and chard.  The plan for this year, since I will be gardening in my back yard as well as on a community plot, is that I don't want to grow anything in my yard that will get to big and spread out into the neighbor's yard.  Living in a rental, I'm fortunate that I can garden at all, but I can only plant along the fence rows where there is no grass to begin with.  This can get tricky when trying to grow tomatoes or cucumbers that like to spread out and pop into the neighbor's yard.  A few years ago, my neighbor was awesome, and the agreement was she didn't care what went into her yard, but she got to eat it.  Works for me!  I'm glad it won't be going to waste!  Last year, however, my stupid neighbors hired and even stupider person to "pull weeds" which resulted in the hacking down of my poke weed and the destruction of half my cucumber plants because the were twining up MY FENCE, but on their side.  I almost cried. 

So, for my yard this year, I'll be planting things like kale, chard, a couple tomatoes because, well, I need those.... some beans, sunflowers, herbs.... plants that are pretty stationary and won't branch out.  My garden plot will have cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, herbs, flowers, and some other things that I am forgetting right now.  I'm pretty stoked.  I'll also have two friends helping with the garden plot, so I think we'll have a pretty epic garden.

Starting in June, on Thursday nights, my friend Morgan and I will have a booth at this year's LEAF pick up (Lakewood Earth and Food.)  It's our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program, and they have vendors set up and sell as well.  We hope to have extra produce to sell, as well as homemade jams, jellies, pickles, baked goods and some ZombieSocks (http://www.etsy.com/shop/ZombieSocks).  I'm hoping to really learn a lot from this, meet local farmers and network.  I'll also use this as a platform for advertising my summer Weed Walks.  Not only will my garden be epic, but I think this summer will be epic in general.

On a final note, check this out:

 This is one of my tomato seedlings (Black from Tula via Seed Savers) that sprouted three leaves instead of the normal two.  Apparently in fruits and vegetables, "tri-cots" and even "quad-cots" are common; they are supposed to be hardier and more prolific than their two-leaved brethren, but saved seeds don't mean you'll get a strain of tri - cots.  I'm interested to see what this plant does.

And this is a picture of a most gorgeous Pileated Woodpecker I saw in the Metro Parks last weekend.