Gardening season begins

We've officially begun the spring gardening season. While we did spend time painting -- in fact, 1/4 of the house is about 90 percent finished (all we need is a second coat on the trim), there was gardening to be done.

Our gardener Larry took out a giant bougainvillea that I hacked to the ground when we were painting near the trellis (which we replaced with a looks-like-wood plastic version), and the stump managed to grow quite a few shoots. So Larry managed to pull it out of the ground (how does he do it???), and I transplanted it into the giant pot that held a roma tomato plant for the past two years.

When prepping the pot (I used homemade compost because we're country people, you see, and there was a sprout already there. I pulled it, and turns out it's a walnut sprout. So I put the bougainvillea in the big pot, the walnut in a smaller one. Now we have a baby walnut tree. Check back with me in five years.

Ilene and I took the little girl first to Sharkeys (every burrito available with low-fat wheat tortillas and tofu, thank you), and then to the Green Thumb (or is it Arrow?) nursery on Sherman Way just West of Van Nuys Boulevard. They've always got better stuff than Home Depot. We got a few six-packs, and Ilene plugged them in today, right where we're almost finished painting. She had to pull some persistant weeds first.

I also got some vegetable seeds -- bush beans, cucumbers and zucchini -- and I'm going to think about sprouting them soon. I'm thinking beyond tomatoes this year, and especially when it comes to squash plants, you can get a whole lot from a little plant -- hopefully even in our sun-challenged side yard.