The rhubarb is up!

Every spring, we search for the first little red rhubarb noses poking out of the soil above our rhubarb plants. And they’re up! It’s officially spring! It will be only a couple of weeks and we’ll be eating rhubarb pie and I will start my spring canning, making Grandma’s favorite rhubarb conserve. I can’t wait! I like to use it in tarts, filled cookies, and on nice hot homemade rolls. (The recipe is in my canning book.)

We were walking in the berry patch yesterday and Will discovered that our first asparagus of last year’s planting is poking through the ground. That was the very best planting we’d ever seen. The roots were great (from Nourse Farms) and the plants made more than a dozen spears, each. Some were large enough to pick but we restrained our greedy selves and waited till this year so the roots would establish. THAT was hard! But now every plant is sending up spears and lots of them. Nice fat ones, too. Wow! Spring is so great.

Tomorrow I’m planting lettuce and a few radishes. It’s a bit too soon for carrots and peas, as we’ve had a real cool, wet spring, but I’m putting in onions as soon as my new asparagus roots from Nourse come next week. I have to plant some asparagus in our big garden because I only have room for about 26 plants in the berry patch. It didn’t come out quite square when we fenced it. Oh well… I want to have LOTS of asparagus to eat fresh and to can. We really love it and I recently found information that it contains a chemical that prevents/treats cancer. I KNEW it was good in so many ways! — Jackie