Despite unseasonably cold temps, I decided to go ahead and get some seeds started. I'm teaching my kids to go green, and they are avid learners of that concept, so I decided to take a page out of my own book.

We had some eggs in the fridge that were well past their date. I knocked the tips off to empty them out, washed them, and gave them a quick dunk in old Easter egg color.

They are sitting in a shallow tray of sand to enable them to sit up and absorb water from the bottom. I poked a hole in the base of each shell with a thumb tack for drainage and filled them with soil. After watering them well and letting them soak, I planted two with corn, two with sunflowers, and one with velvet sea beans. and put them in the windowsill.

The nice thing about planting in eggshells is that they can go right into the ground without disturbing the roots, and they don't wick away the water nearly as fast as peat or newspaper pots do. These would be perfect for tomatoes, as they add calcium to the soil when planted, helping to avoid blossom end rot.

I'm not expecting to have much of a veggie garden this year. DH has promised that he'll garden with me, but he's not much for doing anything that resembles work, or involves sweating, especially out-of-doors sweating, so I'm not holding my breath. I expect that I'll be growing mostly sunflowers and other things that don't need babying. Because I cannot tolerate much sunlight or exertion, I need a helper if I want a veggie garden to be a success.