Last night I dreamed that my friend Angela and I were hoboes riding the rails. Clearly my sleep-brain is in a silly mood. I should stop trying to figure out why and just enjoy it.

I made noodle bowls for dinner: ramen, homemade stock, oven-fried tofu, diced zucchini, fresh ginger, soy-marinated egg. They were quite lovely . . . not least because I topped them with my first garden harvest: slivers of garlic shoots.

You are long-suffering about my lousy photographic skills, so let me inflict a few more on you. Below is one of the new garden boxes, flanked by pea trellis. This box will contain warm-season plants--mostly peppers. The things that look like tapeworms are irrigation hose.

Here is a nice photo of my neighbor's garage. Below it, under the tree, are the other two garden boxes and my mud pile. I'll plant things in these that can thrive in mixed sun and shade: greens, carrots, beets.

This is the worst picture of the bunch: shot from the side garden into the backyard. The gap is where the fence fell down over the winter, but it turns out that I like having a path from front to back, so I don't care. The strange metallic strips in the foreground are cat barriers; Jack and Ruckus are far too enthusiastic about digging up newly planted beds. The trees in the background are my clothesline posts.

It's hard to take pictures of early spring that make it look as good as it feels. Everything is bare and plain, mostly browns and greys. But the garden feels clean, too, as if anything is possible. No bugs, no droughts, no weird powdery fungus or sadistic invasive weeds. You could call it a northcountry Eden.