First Planting and a doggie adventure

D.H. and I had decided last week to begin planting the cold weather crops this Monday, so I got out there around 10 a.m. today.  There was a heavy, cold wind, but this was the day!  I got out the rake and the weed puller and went to work.  

There were only two dandelions in the bed I chose, and Jim had spread old manure lightly and evenly last fall, so there was very little preparation to do.  I made a light mark in the soil and started planting spinach seed.  Finished three and a half rows of spinach and then put in one row of Prizehead lettuce and one row of Buttercrunch lettuce.  These were in bed #4 (out of 11).  I keep track of what goes into which bed each year to insure rotation, especially of potatoes, peas and corn.  You can see where the rows are marked with a small stone.  The half row is the second from the beginning--because the beds are angled, I insert a half row so the others can run perpendicular to the long sides of the beds.

Then I went to bed #8 and planted 32 snap peas along the chicken wire fence at the south end of the bed.  In two weeks I'll plant a row along the fence at the north end of the bed.  We love the fresh, raw sugar snap peas.  They're also very good just lightly blanched and used in salads or stir fries.

This is a picture of the beds on the south side of the garden.  To the left, the north, there are another six beds.  Two of those have strawberries, still covered with vegetable matter, and one bed holds some perennials and tulips.

On Saturday I put out food for Honey, our little mixed spaniel mutt, around four in the afternoon.  She usually gets fed about that time, but didn't seem to be around right then.  She knows where to find her food dish in the garage, so I wasn't concerned.  Sunday morning when we left for church I noticed that her food hadn't been touched, and I hadn't seen her around at all.  And then when we returned after church and dinner with friends, the food was still untouched.  I asked Jim if he had seen her that day, but he hadn't.

About 4:30 we got a phone call that some people out walking had found her stuck in a culvert just south of our property.  We know she does wriggle through culverts. This time she had gotten into a culvert under a driveway that was plugged with ice on one end, and apparently didn't know how to back out.  By the time we arrived, they had broken the ice plug and freed her, and she was anxious to come home.  She was soaking wet, and very cold, but apparently unharmed otherwise.  And she was sure ready for her dinner!

Today she's taking it easy, finding a sunny spot out of the wind to recuperate.  We hope she's smart enough to learn from this experience, but she's not the brightest kid on the block.