FIRST HARVEST

Western fence lizard with fleabane

We've been getting radishes and a little lettuce for a couple of weeks now. Today the sugar snap peas joined in! There are eight tasty little buggers to add to the radishes and lettuce for our salad, plus greek basil for the dressing, and greek oregano and italian basil to add to the tomato sauce.

The very weird thing is that the petit pois peas, which are supposed to be 20 days earlier than the sugar snaps, harvesting last week, are in full flower and just starting to make little pods. The sugar snaps aren't due until sometime in June.

Of course being a beginner has advantages: you don't know what isn't "supposed" to happen. When I told the local farmer at the farmers' market that I'd pass on the broccoli rabe because our's is growing, he snootily announced that he hoped I was not growing it in Ukiah where it is already way too hot. I told him I'd had a great crop of it all last summer...and I don't think he believed me. On the other hand, what he was selling looked like rapini to me, not broccoli rabe. About half the websites and seed catalogues say it is the same plant. His "rabe" was all leaf, none of the nice stalks with teeny floret things on the end. So maybe he thinks he's growing broccoli rabe, but anybody who grew up eating Brooklyn Italian food knows the difference.

Meanwhile our winter dormant xeric perennials in the front yard have all woken up and leafed out. The rockroses, yarrows and lambs ears are blooming. The bee plant and a couple of others are starting to form buds. But deer have eaten the buds off our new rosebushes, so Stu is getting sent out tomorrow to buy some "Not Tonight, Deer" repellent.