It's a beginning, I reminded myself the day I finally started the tomatoes in mid-April. A couple weeks late. Still, a beginning.

Crouched down outside the back door, I pushed tiny seeds into pots of damp, cold potting soil. I never like to get tomatoes in the garden much before June, anyway. And the rain and grey skies had seemed endless.

Then the sun came out. In the brief, brutal heat wave of late April, windows were propped open, screen doors affixed, shorts and sunscreen located.

Then the weather correction. Welcome, blissful chill. As I write this I am wearing a sweatshirt. When you read this, you may be in a tank top.

Still, I felt guilty about getting a late start. My husband had already done most of the heavy planting.

He'd tilled and manured the garden. Sowed the center bed with peas, spinach, radishes, beets and carrots. When the onion plants arrived from Johnny's, we worked together. Hands remembering the feel of the soil, backs feeling the ache of garden work.

The peas, onions and radishes are somewhat dazed from the weather shifts and now, drowning in the rain. But we have the healthiest row of lettuce, gorgeous, green and ruffled red. I scissored off a salad-spinner-full and rinsed away the grit. Ate the first salad with the first radishes.

The other week we went to buy eggs from neighbor Jeanne Williams, who operates Red Barn Farm with her husband, Llew. They raise laying hens, roasting chickens, goats, vegetables and bees. She'd started numerous flats in her greenhouse but this day, Jeanne was sowing the first seeds in the ground. Their farm is down in the valley, where nights are colder and frosts later.

Kneeling in the soil, behind a high mesh fence to deter goats, deer, nosy chickens and her dog, Pumpkin, Jeanne planted her lettuce bed.

Listen to these names, she said, reading from lettuce packets she held: Antares, Forellenschluss, Revolution, Cardinal Batavian, Lollo di Vino, Plato Romaine and Tango.

She gave me a mixed pack of tomato seedlings, including Aunt Ruby's German Green. "Pick when there's a red blush at the bottom end," she said.

Up high atop the ridge, where we live, spring has fully begun. No longer the tease of daffodils and crocus. Now, Russian olive blossoms add a heavy sweetness to the air. In the woods, puffy hawthorn blooms, and magenta redbuds and crisp, white dogwoods stand out against the deep saturated green of trees that leafed out overnight.

If my husband David, an artist, had painted this scene, I would say he made it too green, that it never looks like this.

I would be wrong. In the spring, on certain days in the country, it really does.

My tomato seeds have sprouted. Thin stems with tiny, promising green leaves have popped out. I'll thin them, leaving one or two shoots per pot, water them and turn them to face the sun. Around the first of June, after they're strong and acclimated to the outdoors, I'll plant them in the warm, welcoming soil of the garden.

To purchase whole goats or goat meat, roasting chickens or eggs, call Red Barn Farm at 724-447-2951.

Chickpea, Feta and Cilantro Salad

PG tested

This salad is especially good with garden-fresh herbs and the creamy, mild Bulgarian feta from Stamoolis Brothers in the Strip District.

• 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large red onion, chopped
• Kosher salt
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 or 2 red chiles, seeded and finely chopped (I used 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes)
• 1 2/3 cups crumbled feta cheese
• 1 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 3 or 4 scallions, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• Juice of 1 lemon

Put chickpeas in salad bowl.

In heavy, medium skillet, warm 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat. Add red onion and pinch of kosher salt.

Reduce heat and cook gently until tender and lightly golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Stir in garlic and chile; cook and stir 1 minute more until fragrant, taking care not to burn garlic. Cool completely.

Add feta, parsley, scallions, cilantro and lemon juice to chickpeas. Add red onion mixture and remaining 5 tablespoons olive oil. Season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and mix well.

Makes 6 servings as a side dish.

-- Adapted from "Falling Cloudberries" by Tessa Kiros (Andrews McMeel, 2009, $29.99)