I am as in awe of Spring each year as any primitive person ever was who had no way to mark the seasons and didn't know that Spring came around as regular as clockwork every year.

Where I grew up over in West Tennessee, folks planted lettuce and mustard on Valentines day. On top of the snow, if necessary I have done that myself, when the seed bed I'd prepared was covered with snow. I figured if you plant grass seed on top of the snow lettuce ought to do as well. I never plant mustard, as we don't care for it that much. I think Mama mixed it with wild greens like poke salat and 'mouse ear'.

When we were growing sweet potatoes to sell Daddy and my big brother Robert would burn off a plant bed real early in the Spring , piling extra brush on the spot so it would have the weed seed killed and be enriched. I'm sure spoiled hay and stable manure was tilled in. Long stringy seed potatoes saved from the last crop were laid side by side, end to end in the rich dirt and covered up with sawdust, etc. Daddy always kept a good sized area for Mom to have her own little plant bed for lettuce, radishes, green onions, mustard, etc. You see, he really loved 'wilted lettuce', and Mama was a dab hand at making it. She saved the tender green radish leaves to cut up along with the green onions, tops and all, and the leaf lettuce. Went mighty good with beans and cornbread, I can tell you! Makes me hungry to think about it, and next time I go to the store I'm getting me some leaf lettuce and other fixin's so I can eat high on the hog like that!

Wilted Lettuce
My memories took me back in time to the days when Mama made big bowls of wilted lettuce for my hard working Daddy..He LOVED it ! When he burned off the plant bed where he set out the scraggly sweet potatoes to make plants, he always burned off enough extra space so Mama could have a lettuce bed...She also planted lovely red radishes and spring onions....I'm sure Daddy kept a close eye on those little green sprouts, hungering for something green on the table to go with all those beans Mama cooked in that big black dinner kittle...

One day he would come to the house smiling, toting a watering bucket just full of leafy lettuce and other things picked in the plant bed. Those greens had grown super fast in the rich black soil, and even the tender leaves of the radishes could be used, and there would be a bit of tender mustard greens...It didn't take long for Mama to fry up some bacon while Daddy was out by the well house washing up the greens....The bacon was put on the side after it was crumbled , and a bit of water was poured into the hot grease...We little'uns were warned away from the cabinet as Mama poured that hot grease all over that big panful of torn up greens...We didn't like it as well as Daddy did, but I'm sure each one ate their share.