Happy vernal equinox!
One of my biggest goals for 2014 was to pick one holiday per month that meant something. January, I made up Inflection Day, and we celebrated Imbolc
in February. March is one of the easy months since it has an
obvious holiday --- the Vernal Equinox (aka the first day of spring, for
those less geeky than me).
It's a real joy to wake
at first light at this time of year and still have a couple of hours of
daylight after supper. (We're early diners.) The last week
has featured the first butterflies of the year (a comma or question
mark, plus several spring azures), frog calls have turned into a frenzy,
and the "weedy" wildflowers like speedwell and purple dead nettle are
starting to bloom. I even saw a bat out swooping up the first
spring insects!
The Egyptian onions are growing like crazy, making this a great time to cook up some of the last butternuts into butternut soup.
We've also been enjoying the first kale leaves and will soon be eating
lettuce. The hunger gap is starting to close!
Happy spring!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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What easily grown salad greens would you choose, for a townie Kindergartener to plant in a big pot? And what flowers, in another?
btw--Is the dead nettle also called heal-all?
The wild Speedwell has a tame cousin, too, I think.
Mom --- I'm far from an expert on either kids or containers, but Swiss chard would be fun since it lasts through the summer and can be got with colored stalks. Lettuce would be easy, but not very long-lasting.
I don't plant many flowers, so I'm probably on a kid level there. My favorite annuals are zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds.
Nope, dead nettle and heal-all are different. You won't see heal-all blooming until summer. You're right about the speedwell cousin --- speedwell is a big genus with a lot of species in it.