In spring, all things seem very possible

There's nothing like a clear, crisp spring morning to make one believe that anything is possible.

Here in beautiful Gas Valley, the sun is shining, the grass is green, and the barn swallows have come back from wherever they went. I've had two cups of coffee and feel like I could take on the world. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Three weeks ago I planted an early garden during a lovely global warming anomaly with temperatures spiking at 84 degrees. I'll report on the success, or lack thereof, in a moment, but first, here's Planting the Garden Round Two.

"I don't know what got into these peppers," Honey said, contemplating the lush banana pepper starts that grew so fast she had to put them in individual pots weeks ahead of schedule.

The broccoli were racing ahead, too, along with several of the flower types my wife started under grow lights in early March. Her impatiens were impatient, marigolds too merry, and the zinnias tired of meditating their zen.

Thanks to Good Neighbor Swartzy, who never met a new piece of farming equipment he didn't want, I've had his plastic mulch tractor attachment to borrow the past few years. I confess I went a little nuts with it, planting much of my vegetable garden in plastic mulch in addition to using it in the fields of pumpkins for the grandsons' pumpkin patch business.

Plastic mulch blocks the weeds and warms the soil. I do like it, I do. But I found myself missing the habit of cultivating the soil around my garden plants.

Really, you're asking yourself? A person could miss hoeing?

It's true. I'll get over it, of course, but for now there's another reason to plant without plastic: deer.

When I was a kid, there were no deer around here. Honestly, there were none.

When the children were little, we saw a herd of deer in a downstate park.

"Oh, look at the beautiful deer!" we said. We were so innocent.

Then we built our house on the farm and planted shrubs and flowers. The deer ate them. I planted pine seedlings. The deer ate them. I planted a garden. The deer ate it.

I took up deer hunting. "I don't hunt for sport, I hunt for revenge," I tell people. Not being wasteful, I learned to butcher them myself and make a spicy deer chili.

When I started using plastic mulch for pumpkins, the deer had fun walking through it, eating the pumpkin seedlings and hearing the funny sound the plastic made when their sharp hooves poked holes in every square foot of it.

I've tried a variety of strategies to keep the deer out. None worked, until last year I tried a new way to do electric fence, putting up a double fence: easy, cheap and it works. Look on the internet.

Which brings me to this year. I'm not going to lay plastic mulch until just before time to plant pumpkins and put up the electric fence in early June, giving the deer less time to solve the electric fence.

But the garden needs to be put in between now and Memorial Day. That means planting the old-fashioned way and cultivating with tiller and hoe. Fortunately, my yearning for doing that coincides with a reason to.

Now for a report on my early garden, planted three weeks ago.

Snow peas and sugar snap peas are up and doing great. Peas love cool weather. The first potato shoots are just now emerging: a good head-start. Teensy beet plants are up in quantity and doing well. Even better, they're up before the teensy weed seeds. Kale came up spotty but may have been eaten by flea beetles, those tiny black specks that jump like fleas and do more damage to a variety of vegetables than you'd believe possible, given their size.

I have given up on the three rows of sweet corn I planted, though I saw a shoot or two a few days ago. The soil wasn't warm enough for good germination. Oh, well, it was old seed.

As for the four beautiful pepper plants I set out, the God of Frost laughed at my puny attempts at protection and took them as sacrificial lambs.

Thanks to my wife's bountiful efforts, however, we have lots more peppers. I set them out yesterday in a long row with cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.

No plastic. Just dirt. Can't wait to hoe.

Ah, spring!

(Fred Miller's third book of stories, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave." is $10 and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, Connie's Kitchen restaurant, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)