After getting thoroughly lambasted by all our family at Christmas for not posting since October, we're finally back to it. Part of the reason for the lapse was due to end of semester and holiday craziness, and part was due to the lack of things to post. I mean, is it really that exciting to read that our carrots have grown a quarter inch? Happily we now have some garden news worth writing home about: our first harvest. The salad greens needed thinning so we grabbed up some of the baby greens, added parsley, cilantro, chives, and fennel from our herb garden, and had a nice little salad, made all the more tasty because we grew it.

Gardening seems somewhat magical to me; I marvel at the fact that I can throw some ten-cent seeds into the ground and weeks later pull up vegetables that I'd pay ten dollars for at the grocery store. It makes me realize how far removed I am from the daily existence of just a couple generations past. Our grocery stores would seem (and, indeed, are) far more magical to my great-grandma than a simple vegetable garden would, and yet it's the garden that amazes me.