May 25

We’ve finally received a stretch of good transplanting weather, and we’ll take it even if it is overdue. Rain has been steady since last evening, and the forecast shows cool and damp for the next couple of days.

In anticipation, they were busy across the road at the farm yesterday. Dozens of flats, with thousands of seedlings of differing vegetables, were brought forth from the greenhouse and placed on the driveway in front of the store, ready in queue for the transplanter and the field. It was non stop afterward, and I watched the tractor slowly making its way down rows across the street, with Fred and Louise seated low in the surrey chairs behind, picking plants out of the cells and placing them one-by-one into the holes just poked and watered by the transplanter wheel, as it slowly progressed down the row of plastic.

I took the hint to follow suit, taking my single flat of seedlings out of the cold frame and planting the three raised beds in the lower garden. This year will be cukes, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, and squash, provided that the fates work in our favor and against the chipmunks, rabbits, crows and slugs, which have one or more given us headaches in the past.

This morning in the drizzle I walked between several rows of peppers and eggplants across the street, admittedly nosy in my admiration of yesterday’s work. It’s a pleasant sight to look down a row that is 300 feet long and see plant after plant of small seedling clones, each a vibrant green and yet blemish free from disease or pest, cast in relief against the black plastic and weed-free soil between rows. It is idyllic and fresh to see the seedlings at this stage.