You can take the girl out of the Midwest...

       ...but you can't teach someone from Missouri when to plant their Florida garden.

     I was talking with a friend last week and he said, "I got our garden planted," to which I replied, "What garden?"

     Crap!  That day I wore a sweatshirt was winter! 

      Come to think of it, the temps are definitely in the balmy range so I gathered together all the seeds I wanted to plant and immediately realized, as I do every year, that I don't have nearly enough space to plant all this stuff.  And why did the seed company send me a free packet of cantaloupe seeds?!  I have never gotten a cantaloupe past baseball size and frankly, I'm not up to that challenge.

     I absolutely had to revamp the area where I will place the 5 gallon buckets that I plant tomatoes and cucumbers in.  Thankfully, I've been stumbling in that direction for a few months, building the 4' sections of reclaimed fence post walkway that I planned on using to define the area.  I had enough to finish this long crucial stretch.  The ground is covered with the clearanced weed barrier that I picked up for $3/roll and I'm still kicking myself for not buying every roll they had.  

     A quick run to Home Depot for some of their cheapest topsoil and compost/manure and I've got a good start on my veggie garden.  I planted 2 "nursery" buckets each of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (I will transplant the seedlings to more buckets once they are strong) and called it a day.  I should be able to get all the seeds planted (with the exception of that damnable cantaloupe) by the end of next week and that's one of the earliest gardens this midwestern girl has gotten in the ground since I moved to Florida in 2004!