Starting a blog and starting a garden

So, I decided to start a blog.  I have to admit, I'm kind of nervous.  Will anybody read it?  Will I post as often as I mean to?  Who knows?  I might as well give it a shot.  I love reading my friends' blogs because it feels like a way to keep up with what's going on in their lives, even though we don't live as close to each other as we used to or talk to each other as often as we'd like.  I think that's what I want this blog to be: a way for friends, family to keep up with what's happening in my life, keep up with what projects--mundane as they may be--I'm working on. So here goes...

Right now in Spokane, it's trying to be spring.  When I wake up in the morning, I can expect to see anything ranging from wet, heavy snow to glorious sunshine.  This is the time of year that my dad and I get gleams in our eyes as we begin to envision our summer vegetable gardens.  We conspire as to what new vegetables we will try out.  We sort through our seed collection, throwing out any seeds more than 3 years old and discussing which plants worked well last year and which ones didn't.  We draw diagrams of our raised beds, plotting which squares will be devoted to tomatoes, which to peppers, which to lettuce.  We go on Saturday morning excursions to Northwest Seed and Pet to look at their seed selection.  We go through this process every year, much to the bewilderment of my mother ("Are we actually going to eat rutabaga?" "Why do you plant so many peppers if you don't like how they taste?"), but aside from Christmas, early spring/garden-planning season is my favorite time of year.

This year, we planted our seedlings in mid-February.  We only start peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes this early because peppers and eggplants take a long time to grow and benefit from an early start, and we like our tomato plants to get HUGE, so the earlier the better, I guess.  Other plants we start later or seed directly into the ground in May.  The new veggies we're trying out are rutabagas, parsnips, purple kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts.  Technically, we grew brussels sprouts last year, but they had bugs all over the leaves and didn't produce well.  This year, we're trying again, and if the bugs reappear, I found an organic hot pepper spray (essentially mace for bugs) that doesn't hurt the plant but makes it taste yucky to whatever munches on it.  I hope it works.  Also, my dad is planting more peppers than ever (18 plants!), and has promised that he will try to eat more of them.  We're also doing peppers in our garden, though not as many, and my husband has plans to use the really spicy ones to make a version of Ass-Kickin' Peanuts.

So, spring storms on, but while the garden looks like this on the outside...

...this is what's happening inside the greenhouse :-)