Egg shells just as good second time around

All of a sudden the out-ofplace magnolias began blooming a few blocks away, the world’s largest daffodils started smiling at me on my morning walk and tiny fists of potential fruit started showing themselves along the branches of my baby plum trees.

Even the crab apple tree standing sentinel at the entrance to the parking lot at work has exploded into a cloud of pink.

Who opened the valve on spring? It’s happening at such a crazy pace that I’ve already lost track of my responsibilities to the experimental garden.

My partner, Beth, and I looked around after one of the recent snows, took note of a promising garlic crop and reckoned we’d get back to digging kitchen compost into the potato archipelago on a less muddy day.

I did buy a bunch of seeds planning to get going on the rows of spinach, kale and lettuce in the cold frame, which seem to always perform OK, no matter how late I plant.

Still, I’m worried that I’ve missed the window for peas — a stack of seed packets that is, objectively, too ambitious, never mind delays due to weather or sloth.

This week I finally committed to sticking some seeds in soil. But it wasn’t fear of a bad harvest that got me going.

It was that my young chickens finally started laying eggs. I’ve fallen in love with the color of their shells and am basically unable to toss the creamy white, pinkishbrown and olive husks of breakfast into the compost.

I washed a week’s worth of shells, poked holes in the bottom and packed them with moist potting soil, gently tucking an acorn squash seed into each. I’ll keep them moist and warm.

And when the starts grow strong and too big for their fragile pots, I’ll crack the shells again, this time freeing a potential new crop into the garden.