My original goal was to write 500 words a day to exercise my writing skills and get me used to writing on a consistent basis. Yeah, I didn’t pull that off. So much life got in the way. Still I am trying not to beat myself up for my varied and numerous faults, so I am going to forgive myself and reaffirm this goal.

Today is my daughter’s 11th birthday. This has resulted in two mindsets. The first is that “OMG I am so Old, “which of course my mother laughs about, but really how can I possible have an 11-year-old. The second is the feeling of my baby not being a baby anymore. She has become e so independent and headstrong and I couldn’t be happier, but I miss the little girl who just needed her mommy too.

Also, she is slowly creeping towards those teen years; An age I both fear, and am looking forward to. It is so strange wanting your child to grow and learn and have experiences at the same time that you want to protect them from everything. I’m not alone and every parent goes through this.

This week I have been channeling my parental urge to nurture and take care of things into producing my vegetable garden for the summer. After last year’s semi successful slosh into the world of gardening, I feel a little bit more confident about what I need to do. So, we made a trip to the nursery and I picked out my new little babies to worry about. (Yes, the parenting analogies are still coming.) This year I am also attempting to grow some plants from seed. I have planted carrots, spinach, and bunching onions in seed form. Other than that, the garden has my usual crop of tomatoes, peppers and kale, strawberries, and assorted herbs. I am also going to try a new gardening technique for some high intensity lettuce production. I will keep you posted on how it goes. My grape plants survived Chicago’s torrential winter and my chives of course came back like clock-work.

This year I also installed an indoor herb garden that I am hoping I can successfully keep alive. So perhaps my motherly instincts are a bit in overdrive, but at least I am not allowing them to smother my human child. Besides what a better way to celebrate the end of winter then with a garden.

The spring always brings three events that I have begun to intertwine in my mind. My daughter’s birthday, planting, and Mother’s Day. My own mother fostered in me a love of nature and growing things, and I’m trying to pass it on. My daughter sits with me in the backyard hands buried in soil as she mixes compost with dirt. We plant the strawberries that always remind me of the little townhouse in Alaska that I lived in when I was young. My mother grew strawberries in the backyard and I was always fascinated with the way the fruit would start as a flower and turn into a ripe red berry over time.

Now we live in our small townhouse in Chicago. With the equally small garden. I try to cram as many vegetables into a small space as possible and my daughter loves to water the plants. We always go to the plant nursery at this time of year to buy anything I haven’t been successful starting from seed. My husband and I agree that the expense is my Mother’s Day gift. What I don’t say is that the real gift is letting my daughter plant them in the ground. While I sit back and watch the plants and my little girl grow.