All evening and all night, rain and sleet and fat wet snowflakes. This morning, the world is brown and sopping and cold and early-spring magnificent . . . which is to say, none of that damn snow stuck, just as I'd predicted. Plus, my garden has been launched!

I spent a big chunk of yesterday arranging the vertical architecture: pounding in tomato stakes, setting bean and pea and cucumber trellises. It's way too early to plant most of these vegetables; but given my tiny space, I had to lay out the structure for the entire summer before I began sowing the first beds.

Once that was done, I moved forward into my first open-air planting. (I've already got arugula sprouting in the cold frame.) In the raised beds, under new row covers, I sowed spinach and chard. Around the uncovered edges I sowed more spinach and also radishes, and I planted peas along the zig-zags of the new compact pea trellis. This spring I'm working hard to increase vertical cultivation as I want to make room for a few in-ground potatoes. (I haven't had much luck with production in the potato bags.) I already do a lot of close planting, succession planting, interplanting; and a greater emphasis on trellising will significantly save space. I'll try to remember to take a picture today, to show you the bare bones of Garden 2023.

Miniature farming is extremely interesting, far more than I expected it to be when I moved here. In my front yard I've got excellent southern exposure and a longer growing season than I used to have, combined with city vulnerabilities (dogs, trash, highly compressed space, urban invasions: that stupid groundhog, those delinquent squirrels, the looming possibilities of rats and vandals and street construction, etc., etc.). Nonetheless, the project has a dollhouse fun: how can I transform a postage stamp into a thriving cottage and kitchen garden? As always, I am full of hope in the spring.

Already, I've brought some "harvests" into the house: a handful of green-onion sprouts, some wintered-over spinach. But it's March in Maine, and I don't have a greenhouse. I feel completely justified in crowing over my teeny-tiny crops.