The past week’s sunny 40-degree days drove me out into the vegetable garden. With the help of my daughter and granddaughter I was able to prepare an area to receive peas in the spring. We spent most of a day puling the roots of wild morning glory. It is truly astonishing how they continue to multiply underground. Some are several feet long. If a tiny piece — say an inch — breaks off, it will grow. It’s a hopeless and never-ending battle.

The greenhouse is beginning to show some promise. The onions I seeded last week have germinated. I’m irritated as this year’s seed packages contain a miniscule amount of seed. I can see I need duplicates of several.

It’s like everything in the marketing world. There is the large indention in the bottom of some bottles so you are mislead as to the amount if you don’t read. Cereal has less in a box. I could go on but what’s the point?

I went though the stored potatoes in the pantry. Some had six-inch long sprouts. I rubbed them off and separated out the small ones to replant. I like to use them as seed since they do not require cutting and they are a pain to peel for supper. I might pop them into some layers of hay soon. They come up in the spring if inadvertently left during fall harvest so clearly they can survive cold. Word to the wise, though, the foliage is tender and will suffer a late frost. I found this out last year as I started some in large totes inside the greenhouse and put them outside to soon. Everything I ever learned is from doing it wrong first!

Betsy Carnie is the cook at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School. Marie told me that she made a delicious butter out of leeks. I took it to heart and made a big pot of it. I sauteed them until tender, added a stitch or two of butter, and hit them with the hand-held blender. I put several little jars of it into the freezer. They make a wonderful starter kit for soup.

Recently, I used up all the root vegetables (carrots, turnips, rutabagas, garlic and onions) and made a giant winter soup. I have a wonderful life even in the midst of this hideous pandemic if I take some time to notice.

Speaking of Covid, now that the vaccine is on the horizon and it seems to be getting worse by the day, I have a movie reference. This also works for the Biden inauguration which is 18 hours away as I write this. Remember the scene in Jaws when the Robert Shaw charter tells of the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis. Some thousand sailors went into the water but only 300 survived in the shark-infested waters. Shaw tells that the scariest time was right when the helicopters arrived to begin the rescue. That’s the exact feeling I’m having about getting the vaccine in time and being rescued from the Trump presidency.