There is a cardinal rule associated with the Buddy System: you never let your buddy go alone to Lowe's alone during an unusually warm late winter/early spring. Not if you don't want to watch her unload a trunk full of seeds, plants, and soil. Okay, perhaps today it wasn't an entire trunk full, but that's only because I didn't grab one of those trees they had set out to tempt me, nor did I pick up the cyclamen I wanted so desperately to take home. I'm sure the garden centers at the Lowe's back in Summerville (where I frequented at the old Park) are entirely stocked with all the delicately colored spring flowers, lots of pinks and purples and whites, but the stores in my new hometown are a different story. Just a few flowers on a rack at the front of the store, a few trees that are starting to bud a little too soon for this growing zone. My friend reminds me not to set anything in the ground until Mother's Day, but it is going to challenge my patience to wait that long.
I am going to get a head start, one way or another. I bought a bunch of peat pots and some organic starter soil. I will be starting my tomatoes very soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. They'll stay inside for at least a month, possibly two. When they do go in the ground, they'll be fairly advanced and bushy, ready to burst out of their peat pot, and I'm prepared to cover them if needed for a late snow. I bought seven large starter pots, for the tomatoes, and a rack of 50 cells for the other things that will need a head start. One of the seed packets for an heirloom tomato variety claims that one has to wait a long time for the fruit to ripen but they're worth it, so they will be the first seeds I sow.
It never got as warm as I expected it to today, but that didn't stop every other resident of this house (except Agnes) from spending the bulk of the day outside. The dogs continued to keep us safe from squirrels and cars in the alley, the cats continued to climb trees and take dirt baths, and Mr S-P continued to dig and build and move sod and repair irrigation lines and lay out fires and more things than I care to think about. He works himself to a nub in the back yard pretty much every day. It exhausts me just watching him. But his industriousness is having an effect. The yard is coming together very quickly. I'm going to enjoy watching it green up.
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