It's all about lettuce - we're definitely in the green now. Reyn first planted lettuce seeds on February 11th, then followed with a second planting three weeks later.  When it was time to transplant the seedlings, the first batch went directly into the garden, while the second planting went in the ground - but, within the cold-frame.  At the time we were experiencing unusually mild weather.  Well, that didn't last long and we have now been blessed with a typical long, wet, cool Oregon spring.  The seedling which were planted in the garden spent weeks hunkered down in survival mode, while the plants under the protection of the cold-frame basked in the warmth and put all their energy into large, lush, delicate leaves.  We ate our first salad on May 5th and have been enjoying an abundance of greens since then. We have been surprised and delighted by the size and tenderness of the leaves.  While they taste like baby lettuce leaves, they are huge.

We are happy to begin settling in to our preferred mode of meal preparation, which begins with a trip to the garden.  It is truly a gift to finish our meal with a salad of greens so fresh that they were in the ground only an hour before.  Tonight we enjoyed a Salad Nicoise on a giant bed of fresh greens.

The salad consisted of a combination of steamed red potatoes, lightly steamed green beans (from the freezer), cubed tomatoes, a few calamata olives, a can of wild, line-caught Oregon Albacore tuna, 2 hard boiled eggs (eggs purchased from a woman at the swimming pool each Monday morning), a garden fresh sliced scallion, a few capers, and a good measure of chopped parsley.  Toss all with a lemon vinaigrette and pile atop a mountain of greens.  Yummm . . . .