Light rain all day yesterday and the soil is nice and damp, but now warmed by today’s sun. Everything smells fresh and amazing. Lettuce starters are doing really well.

Last year’s kale is in full bloom, ensuring we have kale year round with zero effort. Other flowers do their part to attract bees.

Fruit trees flowering everywhere you turn. Blueberries soon will flower in the front yard.

Strawberries in bloom, rhubarb growing nicely, the fennel is up, and red sorrel pops up where it wants.

Rosemary attracts bees to the garden, while our raspberries and thorn-less blackberries send off many new leaves. Their flowers will soon appear. Oregano is everywhere in the raspberry bed.

Forgotten onions are growing, others have been planted. Potatoes and carrots are planted. Free range chives, kale and chard is as luxuriant as ever.

And our tomatoes—grown from seeds saved from last summer’s successes—are enjoying the sun on our south-facing deck.

And the lizards are increasing in abundance. This one likely hatched out early last summer. I haven’t seen our gravid female in a few days—maybe she is digging a nest.

Bewick’s wrens seem to have staked out territory and may nest here this summer. Chipping sparrows appear daily, as do American robins, dark-eyed juncos, chestnut-backed chickadees, house finches and our resident Anna’s hummingbirds.

Turkey vultures and bald eagles soar in thermals. And Cooper’s hawks keep the smaller birds on edge.

This city garden is alive.