Bed of “cut-and-come-again” lettuces, braising greens and spicy greens
Oh, the difference a month makes! On May 10, riding the crest of some crazy energy (the opposite of jetlag?) from my Paris-Amsterdam trip, I planted my entire vegetable garden in one fell swoop (after helping my husband haul most of a truckload of compost). 
Tomato plants about to reach jungle epic proportions
This is not my usual modus operandi. Oh, no. Traditionally, I mapped out intricate plans of what to plant when, starting as early as possible (peas around President’s Day, hardier greens soon after). But what I found over the years is that I could plant a patch of lettuce in March, then another one in May, and the May batch would catch up to the March batch. And then I would have too much lettuce!
Beets and kale (naturally) with an out-of-control oregano plant lurking in the background
Honestly, our vegetable garden was a fright when we landed back in this country on May 7. Weeds aplenty (in spite of a few rounds of weeding earlier this spring), and sad dead tomato plants that we didn’t pull out last fall. We just didn’t bother to do anything else before we went on vacation, because we wouldn’t be around to water the garden (and didn’t expect our friend/dogsitter/housesitter to do it).
Pole beans reaching for the sky (Bullseye)
As it happened, the delay was for the best. The garden is going swimmingly, and we’ve been awash in fresh salad greens for more than a week.
Peas and bush beans (haricots vert, specifically)
We bought small tomato plants instead of starting our own from seeds and nurturing them under grow lights (I used to geek out over the heirloom seed catalogs and end up growing more tomato plants than we needed…until I went back to school and my free time evaporated).
Future producer of yellow crookneck squash
And I also stopped growing a million varieties of squash (heirloom squashes are so PRETTY!) I stick to yellow crookneck, a straight-up zucchini, and a bush delicata. It feels really good to be really on top of things in the vegetable garden for the first time in, oh, about four or five years (at which point my science textbooks and I became likethis), albeit in a more relaxed fashion. Which is also a more realistic fashion, which is never a bad thing!
For more on my garden (from 2010-2011) see my Carrie’s Urban Farm blog.