or, why I suddenly had to have a raised bed for asparagus and strawberries.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff, was a common bedtime story in our home when my boys were toddlers. It tells of a mouse who, when given a cookie, then asks for milk, a straw, and a series of other actions by his boy. In a similar way, a gifted rhubarb plant set off a chain of events on Fiat Farm.

If you give a friend a rhubarb plant, she will want a permanent garden bed to grow it in.

When she decides to build a garden bed, she just has to grow asparagus in it.

Then she goes to buy asparagus online and sees that bare-root strawberries are on sale and needs to buy some of those as well.

Waiting for the plants to arrive, she puts her husband and son to work building the raised bed and filling it with compost.

Seeing how easy that was, she decides to add more raised beds to her garden.

And isn’t that exactly how so many projects start.

I am grateful for the rhubarb and also the prompting to add asparagus. Both are perennial vegetables that are ready to harvest in early spring. As a perennial plant they will produce year after year with a little love and attention on my part.

Like most perennials they will take a few years to establish. I look forward to this reward.

Strawberries are good companion plants for asparagus and are also one of the first plants to bear fruit in the spring.

I placed my raised bed close to the house at the top of a slope, because our winter rains showed me that my summer garden space gets flooded and muddy in the winter.

Plan for the future. Observe your space. Keep busy.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

Audrey Hepburn