This blog is one year old today. I see that this time last year the tomatoes hadn’t sprouted either–but the eggplant and peppers had. Also I already had greens in the ground. (And raspberry and blueberry bushes. But no garlic.)

My guess is that it’s colder this year than it was last year (yesterday’s prediction has become snow/rain) and that’s why I’m not getting any germination from the peppers. The weather channel does predict highs in the 40s and lows in the 30s, which is promising, though we’re definitely below average for March. Assuming we don’t get ridiculous deluges today, Eric and I are going to Home Depot tomorrow for dirt and stakes (“Tomatoes are carnivores?” he said, and I hit him) and twine. Perhaps it’s overly optimistic to think we can work on the yard this weekend, but optimism buoys me.

One of the things we need to do with the dirt is fill in the sides of the driveway, where there have been little ravines all winter long (but not as deep as they were in the fall, I think). Then we will have to face a hard question: do we tear up a bit more lawn and plant shrubs and put down mulch, thereby relieving Eric of even more lawn-mowing duty, or do we put down grass seed so that the neighborhood kids can continue to run unimpeded across our yard from the neighbor-on-the-left’s house to the neighbor-on-the-right’s house all summer? It’s a tough call.