It’s only April, and already the garden has been a bit of a comedy of errors – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Peanut and I were both chomping at the bit to start our garden this year.  We planted a garden two springs ago, as a fun way to get in some one-on-one mother/daughter time with a new baby in the house.  It was fun, and we got a decent amount of food out of it – quite a few salads and lots of herbs, although the tomatoes struggled and then were all eaten by backyard pests once they’d finally sprouted.  Last spring, we were living in temporary housing while we planned our move back home, and planting a garden – even a container garden – just wasn’t in the cards.  Peanut didn’t say much about it, but I know she was disappointed.  So this year, she was doubly excited when I asked her if she wanted to garden with Mommy again.

As soon as the calendar turned to March, she started begging to get plants for the garden.  I wasn’t sure when would be the right time, so I did a little research and concluded that by mid-March, if the weather was looking good, we should be fine to get plants into pots.  Clearly, I was wrong, because we visited multiple nurseries in search of tomatoes, basil, etc. – and everyone looked at me as if I’d sprouted another head when I asked where the edible plants were.  We finally found a few things – some sugar snap peas, cold weather lettuce, and rosemary – at Holly, Woods & Vines down by our old house.  I snapped them up because if we left another greenhouse empty handed, Peanut was going to lose her mind.  We’ll supplement in a little bit, when the warmer weather plants are out.  (Please ignore the pink-haired mermaid photobomb above.)

We got home and got ready to plant.  Steve had nicely prepared the pots earlier in the week, setting them out in the sunniest spot on our back patio and filling them with mulch and then topsoil.  My little gardener and her mermaid were ready to get their hands dirty!

Since the plants we came home with weren’t the plants I was intending to come home with, I did some fast thinking about what should go where.  First thing into the soil was rosemary – the only herb available so early in the season – in the smallest pot.

(Don’t mind the big red splotch on Peanut’s fleece.  That’s her school jacket and it has the school crest embroidered on it.  It was hard to see in pictures but still, I don’t plan to announce to the entire internet where my kid can be found during the day.  Since my photo-editing skills are basically limited to zoom, crop and Instagram, it’s totally obvious that I scribbled over it in red “paint” – but whatever, it does the trick, right?)

Rosemary planted, it was time for the lettuce to go into the big pot.  It’s already pretty much doubled in size since we planted – we’ve had so much rain!  Can’t wait to start eating some backyard salads again.

Last pot – sugar snap peas.  I had no plans to plant peas, but like I said, we had to get something or Peanut would have lost it.  Now that we have them, I’m enjoying watching them curl their little tendrils up the tomato cage, and I hope that we get to enjoy some fresh peas all season long!

And – that’s it for now!  We gave everything a quick “welcome home” water with our new orange watering can and have just been having fun watching things grow and change ever since.  We might need to add a planter once we’re ready for tomatoes, but all in good time.

Anyone else get a ridiculously early start on planting this year?