Most of March in Retrospect

Where has March gone? I've been busy with my vocation, which is great and all that, but I've had limited time in the garden and even less time to blog. And most of the time I could have been blogging has been whiled away in less productive activities, which readers of this blog will be hard pressed to imagine.
In the garden, much is changing. Our last freeze has come and gone. I think. Tomatoes have been transplanted from containers to the beds. I kept one, Matt's Wild Cherry, in a bigger container on the back porch, just because.
My potatoes are all up! The biggest plants are the ones planted whole too early, dug from the beds and transplanted to whiskey barrels intact. Second place goes to - planted too early and left in. Coming in last - the ones I followed the most directions on, waiting to plant and cutting and dusting. The champion spuds in the whiskey barrel have continually been covered with new soil until the barrel is now full. I think tomorrow I am going to hill up some soil on the potatoes in the bed as well.
Without much fanfare I planted some beans and peas the same day I planted my tomatoes. I planted two heirloom varieties - Christmas Lima beans (slow in getting going) and Jacob's Cattle dry beans (apparently with very tasty leaves in the estimation of some insect). I also put in English peas. They are sugar snap peas that came recommended by Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, the package proclaimed. Since Dripping Springs and London have no similarities in climate whatsoever, I assume the peas will die toot suite. But I'll still be happy I bought them. I'd buy poison ivy if it came with a Kew label. My next career move is to become a gardener at Kew, the only real question being which will be my local, The Coach and Horses or The Bell and Crown. The Jolly Gardeners being too obvious. Back to the beans and peas, I inoculated them with rhizobia that are symbiotic with the legumes and allow the plants to fix nitrogen in the soil. I hope this does two things, increase my bean's and pea's thrift and production, while also adding nitrogen to the garden soil for other plants to use.
My other major garden activity this month is watching and waiting for my perennial plants to come back. The first year I planted the cottage garden I got it in late in November and the first freeze wiped out several Mexican Bush and Russian Sage plants. The following spring of waiting for green, giving up and then re-planting was a disappointing experience. The next year, everything came back easy and early. This year, we had the hottest, driest summer ever followed by the coldest winter in 20 some-odd years. 110 and then 8 degrees! Why do I live here? Why do I attempt to garden here? That's it. I'm moving to Kew and going straight to The Jolly Gardeners and, after 5 pints of ordinary, never coming back. I told you that to tell you this - every time I'm in my garden in daylight hours, at least half the time is spent inspecting perennials for signs of growth. I'm still waiting on 3 purple trailing Lantanas, 1 native Lantana, 1 Mexican Bush Sage, 2 Lindhiemer's Sennas. I think I will be saddest about losing the Sennas.
If the trailing Lantana doesn't come back, they will be replaced by Pink Skullcap - Scutellaria Suffrutescens. I think Pink Skullcap's evergreen and miniature shrubby nature will make it a better choice for lining the entrance walk than Lantana. They certainly handle severe heat and drought better than Lantana, something I was shocked to see last summer. Could this entire weather cycle have been sent down upon us to force me to rectify cottage garden design mistakes? Probably.