Hope springs eternal, I guess.  Inspired by the spontaneous appearance of several lettuce plants down in the garden, we are going to give the spring garden another try.  We let last year’s lettuce crop go to seed, and this appears to be the result.  Can’t ignore that kind of sign.  I had become more or less at peace with one of my few regrets in this long, wild ride, that I would never again have the kind of vegetable garden I’ve always wanted, reluctantly accepting, due to the excuses I will elaborate, that things were out of my control.  But the sprouting of this lettuce changes everything.  It is yet another of the many curves thrown when you’re looking for a fastball, and I’m still working on hitting the curve.  You have to stand in there, choke up, relax, and wait.  Sorry for the baseball metaphor in a gardening piece, but it fits.

We had a thriving garden once.  When we were very young, in Tallahassee, our first house, very similar to The Little Hacienda.  We cleared a plot and planted, adding nothing but some chicken poop from the five hens we had, and it produced beyond our expectations.  We also had a pear tree and two pecans, so I’m still not sure why we left.  Anyway, since settling here, we’ve tried almost every year.  We cleared another plot down in the hammock behind the house, fenced it and put in a compost pit.  But we sit on top of an old sand dune, and the soil, though it has been fed behind the house by many years of bay tree leaf droppings, is still predominately sand and silicone.  We’ve built it up over the years, built raised beds, but you can’t get rid of the silicone.  And then there’s the salt air. I wouldn’t trade the proximity to the ocean for anything, but it’s not conducive to growing vegetables.  And then, related to all the above, we have problems with pollination.  We get good, strong plants, and buds, but they don’t pollinate and fruit. Not real sure why.

So, we’re at it again.  Because of the appearance of the lettuce.  I put in more this morning, plus some onions, kale, cilantro, basil, and Swiss chard.  We’ll see.