Just like last year, Jess has started this year’s garden indoors, in the window-seat just off my studio, in a sunny south-facing window. Out of the window you can see down our steep driveway to the Forest Service road, and the long slopes of mountains beyond with their heavy cape of trees. But inside, we’ve pulled the cushion off the window seat (that’s it in the foreground) and started our food nursery on the sunny firm platform that, except in spring, is a great place for a Sunday nap.

I was going to try recounting how many varieties of plants Jess has planted here, but I can’t count that high. There are lettuce and sunflowers and tomatoes and peppers, watermelon and snapdragons and squash and good grief, I can’t remember. Since this picture was taken last week, the window-seat garden has burst forth and multiplied. The lids of most of these strawberry-box gardens have been hinged open to allow their vigorous occupants some headroom.

Jess has been storing these strawberry boxes since last summer, when we bought all the strawberries to freeze and can for jam. (The sad truth is that our own strawberry plants didn’t produce enough fruit for much more than surreptitious mouth-popping, or  adding the occasional tang to a bowl of corn flakes.) The plastic clamshell boxes serve as mini-greenhouses, and many of the warm-weather plants will be hardened off and transferred to the real greenhouse when they’re big enough.

And where’s Jess meanwhile? Oh, she’s down in the real garden, planting cool-weather crops like spinach and radishes. Yeah, I know; it’s only March. She loves to get her hands into the dirt.