Just Let Us Dream

The lone butternut squash has been harvested.  Zucchini are long gone.  The French filet beans are history. Our remaining tomato plants are black mush after the first, second and third killing frosts.

So what IS growing in the High Desert?

Lettuce seedlings.

Crazy, huh?  Lettuce seems like the very first plant that would turn limp and lifeless after a frost.  Mais non!
These little Mesclun-mix sprouts will grow all winter, flourishing underneath a blanket of snow (that they apparently consider their own personal greenhouse) and will yield fresh baby lettuce for early Spring salads. 

A few years ago I optimistically made a late-September sowing of leaf lettuce and wrote it off when the frosts arrived.  The following March after a hard winter they were still green and growing to my utter astonishment.  I purposely tried the same stunt the next fall and served the family Spring lettuce.  It's a successful part of our yearly routine.

Now if I could just get the lettuce and tomatoes to ripen at the same time...

The seedlings are in a raised bed getting full sun all winter.  And it's sunny most any day that it's not actually storming.  Still...gardening is full of surprises, isn't it!

At least my seedlings give me something to share at An Oregon Cottage's Party.