(You'll have to tilt your head to understand this photo...) Here's an idea for my seedlings (finally planted only this week...sigh...) which I probably saw in a magazine, but I don't remember, so I'm saying I made it up. Works great--I just tote the muffin tins back into the house at night where I keep them beneath a tiny lamp. Labeling plastic spoons with the seed names was my neighbor's idea--and a great one.

So the long flower bed on the sunny side of the house looks a bazillion times better after all my work, but there's a hitch. A biggish garter snake (northern brown snake?) is always slinking there now. He says he loves what I've done with the place and he especially enjoys startling me just to hear my garbled scream. I flick my wrists at him and cry "Shoo! Shoo!", but he just giggles, then sticks his tongue out at me. He even loves hiding beneath the muffin tins so I always take one of Tom's canes out there at night to tap, tap, tap them first. Such is Life in the country.

Our huge crab apple tree is in flower--much prettier than this photo shows. I'll keep trying.

(Click to enlarge, but really, the blossoms are a more intense pink.)