One of the things that my mom passed on to me is a love to garden. My first major “employment,” in fact, was weeding my mother’s garden for 25 cents and hour!  But in doing so I gained an appreciation for having my hands in the dirt and helping the garden grow and be healthy so we could have lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Every year when spring is approaching, I get excited about rototilling our rather large garden and getting things planted. Most years I try to get the early things in (potatoes, peas, onions, radishes) during the first warm spell in April and then plant the rest of the seeds (corn, beans, lettuce, carrots, etc.) during the first warm stretch in May. Sometimes we have a killer frost in June so have to be careful to cover things. We have a rather short growing season so have to gamble a bit in starting as early as possible.