I lost the spinach!

The gardening adventure began Mother's Day weekend when my oldest son tilled the garden for me. It was his gift to me. Of course, he used a rototiller to do the job and I am not sure why he was driving his dad's tractor around the backyard at a high rate of speed. Tilling is hard work and I do appreciate his gift!

Here is the garden plot, brown and barren, ready to be planted. This WILL be an adventure.

The first of many little plants waiting to be moved into the big garden.

Lilly, the watch dog, protecting my squash plants. This was taken three minutes before she rolled and then rolled some more through the row of tiny green onion plants. The scream that emitted from my body was similar to the one which came through my lips twenty years ago when I noticed my then four year old son standing out on our porch with his pants pulled down as he stood there peeing into the buckets of maple sap I had spent all day collecting. I can laugh about it now!

This little brown toad kept startling me. Great camouflage!

So...I worked hard all day long planting tomatoes ( Big Boys and Cherry), green onions, peppers -green, hot chili and sweet peppers, cilantro, broccoli, lettuce, cukes, squash -many varieties and then the spinach. I bought two seed packets of spinach - not because I LOVE spinach but because I must have spaced out when seed shopping. I only wanted one packet of spinach seeds but now that I had the two packets I might as well plant them all. So I carefully planted two long rows of spinach seeds and then continued to plant the other veggies. When I reached the end I slowly straightened out my spine and convinced my knees to support me. I attached the seed packets onto stakes at the end of each row. Hmm... odd. I had one empty packet of spinach seeds left after all the rows were marked. I KNOW I planted two rows of spinach but one appeared to have disappeared. I walked around my garden searching. Where could that row of spinach have gone? How does one lose something like this? Did I plant the cucumber hills over the row of spinach? Did aliens beam me up while I was planting and I lost track of time? Or did I get too caught up in my own thoughts? While gardening I had composed a letter in my head that I intend to write and send to my dad as a Father's Day gift. I reflected on my four children and where they are in life and how very proud I am of all of them as they face life and its challenges. I daydreamed about my wonderful husband and how we should celebrate our 30 years of marriage next month. I went through a mental checklist of all I need to get done in the upcoming days. So while I am slightly concerned that I misplaced that row of spinach, I know I had also been busy solving many issues during my garden therapy session - and I never have been good at multi tasking! Let's hope that one row of spinach is enough. I realize that my veggie garden is a bit brown right now so I leave you with a photo or two of my flower gardens which are thriving. The journey to become a master gardener continues.