Since the weather is so warm and sunny today, I decided to go have a look at my pathetic garden. I feel compelled to at least take a peek at the plants every so often, even though the trips out to the garden have been more depressing than fun this winter. The plants are still growing, and what’s survived the freezes seem to be doing OK, but as I went from section to section noticing that everything still looks stunted and not producing anything at all edible, I saw something white peeking out from under the leaves of one of the fava bean plants.

Lo and behold, my fava bean plants are blooming! Yes, they continue to be too short and since the last big freeze are half dead, but they are blooming. A lot of blooms too! After all the depressing plant losses this season, to see something blooming in the garden is a real mood boost.

Also, a few more baby lettuce plants have popped up! I suspect as the weather continues to get warmer and warmer I may find myself overrun with self-planted lettuce. I’m certainly not going to complain about that, and you can be sure I will be saving the seeds from the ones that came up earliest and survived the freezing weather. Those are going to be the seeds I definitely want for early planting next year.

So all is not completely depressing in the garden anymore. I still don’t know that I will bother with a winter garden again, because it’s just not much fun being out in the cold gardening, and I hate seeing hard work go to waste when a hard freeze comes through and kills things even when measures have been taken to save them. But it’s been an interesting experiment, and if nothing else, I’ll have some great lettuce seeds and maybe a pot or two of fava beans out of it.

And one of my tomatoes looks like it might be turning red! Sure hope so. I want those seeds too! That’s been one hardy tomato plant.