Yesterday was a garden day. One of those too rare days when the weather is perfect, the schedule open and the motivation available. A couple song-dueling robins opened the early morning. I noted them on our Wildlife Watch checklist and the day began.

This year, it's been exceedingly difficult to find time to prepare and plant our big vegetable garden. We are, even after yesterday's progress, weeks away from planting the dozens of pepper and tomatos plants that only Saturday night were transplanted into their interim quarters before finding real dirt for their roots in in three weeks or so.

Late on a cool Sunday afternoon of a day that included the following; gently extricating a garter snake from a haphazard stack of TREX boards, discovering a cottontail rabbit nest with 5 babies in the annual rye green manure patch I'd just weed whacked, viewing only our second American painted lady butterfly of the year prospecting our Backyard Habitat for pussytoes plants to lay her eggs upon, we finish preparing the long trench beyond the raspberries and get ready to welcome its seasonal residents; spud starts!

Four varieties of potatoes, each piece sprouting greenish for the bakers and Yukon Golds or red for the remaining two varieties, are carefully placed cut side down and sprouts up in the trench's bottom. Our friend Howard, minutes after appearing at our house via his motorcyle, graciously jumped into action and carefully pulled about four inches of soil over the tallest sprouts. Tonight we'll water them in. In two weeks, we hope to see the first leaves emerging from the twenty foot long row.

Despite the long period until harvesting and the anticipated summer bouts battling the notorious potato beetles, I smile as I think about the time to dig. Finding buried spud treasure reminds me of childhood Easter egg hunts. I get a littlel giddy looking ahead to the joy and wonder and anticipation that comes with each plunge of the spading fork as big and small, oval and round spuds and always a few odd ball configurations (Hey, that one's gotta be my first pet parakeet, Pecky, back in high carb configuration as a Red Norland) appear, eyes blinded on the soil surface after months of growing below.

The gardening guide here in the Washington DC metropol