Look closely. Can you make out anything green? This is what my onion transplants looked like as soon as they were moved outside. It wasn't looking good. By the next morning, there were no signs of life.

Thankfully, we happened upon these little beauties on a recent excursion to the Mountain View Co-op (which is very nice and has a great garden center!). They are purple onions, which is what I use in my onion soup recipe.

My little helper and I uprooted the evidence of our previous attempt and planted these little babies in their place.

So far, they look great. We'll see. If they grow much taller, we'll cut them down a bit to stunt their growth and encourage them to begin developing their yummy, bulbous roots.

Oh, and we added some of this to the soil. Thank you, Cocoa Puff!

I had a little blip in my garden planning calendar. When I mapped everything out, denoting when things were to be started indoors, hardened off, and planted outside, I forgot to make a note to remind myself to harden off the onions. So, planting day came and they hadn't been hardened off, but I was so eager to get them in the ground that I foolishly went forward with planting. I'm not sure that was what killed the little rascals, but it couldn't have helped.

Lesson learned. (I wonder how many times I'll say that this garden season :) So, here's my tub of lettuce that I've been hardening off this week by carrying them outside for incrementally longer periods of time each day.