Maybe I should start marketing pictures of our Romaine lettuce (I think that’s what it is) to seed catalogs this year as champions of Romaine-ness. And if you steal a copy of this picture to represent as your own lettuce, I wouldn’t blame you. I don’t think anything we’ve ever grown has looked that healthy. In fact I’d have taken a picture of the whole row here instead of two plants except that Jess had uprooted the third one back to serve at dinner.

If anyone’s interested in cabbage, our cabbage looks almost this good. Maybe in my outlandish enthusiasm for things green-thumbian I’ll post a picture of our cabbage tomorrow, and the Tomato Jungle after that, and the Forest of Bean Blossoms, and good grief, what’s next? I had fresh strawberries for breakfast this morning, and Swiss chard at dinner last night. What’s Swiss chard? I don’t know, except that Jess steamed it like spinach and served it hot with butter. Nummy. When I was a kid I thought no one could come up with a yukkier dish for human consumption than boiled spinach. Slimy, gloppy, a sinister dark green, and with all the flavor of an iron pipe. It would have tasted better served with hot tar. But the chard last night looked much like the boiled spinach of my youth, and I quite enjoyed it. In fact, I talked it up with my kids in the very way my dad used to whenever Mom served us something questionable from the garden. Ugh, adulthood.