My Shade Garden is coming along nicely. Most of it, at least. I planted early spring plants such as peas, sugar snap peas, broccoli, lettuce, radishes and beets on February 16 and 17.

Remember those Sugar Snap Peas I got from Botanical Interests that I planted a while back? Here they are now!

Aren’t they happy?

The radishes are perking up adorably as well. Here’s one. I love its red stems and heart-shaped leaves.

I can’t wait to see these underground beauties.

The lettuce, broccoli, spinach and beets have also sprouted, but I’ll wait a little bit until they’re bigger before I take pictures.

Someone has been messing around in my garden. I don’t know if it’s a bird or a little mammal, but I really need to figure out a way to keep my plants from getting eaten. I have both a cat and a dog, and the neighbors’ cats come over to play too. You’d think we’d keep the rodents and birds in check, but I still see a lot of gopher holes throughout the lawn.

I was thinking of maybe building some kind of Arduino-powered robot-scarecrow to create a motion-detecting alarm to scare off little creatures. Still tossing around some ideas. Maybe something as simple as solar-powered or wind-powered kinetic sculptures would be sufficient.

As for the Little Marvel Shelling Peas I had leftover from last year, I wrote about refrigerating them before putting them in the ground. I think I read about it somewhere in an old copy of The Old Farmers Almanac. Well, my peas took a very long time to emerge. The Sugar Snaps were way further along before I saw even just a peep of the peas. I finally saw some of them this weekend.

What else have I got to report? Remember the rose bushes I pruned and fed banana peels? They are growing so big and beautiful. Here’s Security, the Rose Bush with the killer thorns by my daughter’s window.

The Olive tree is sprouting shoots at its base.

I think I may take cuttings this summer and see if we can grow more of this Olive tree that is so rich in symbolism.