A great day to plant a garden with Michelle Obama

This warm weather has gardeners' green thumbs twitching.

Over the weekend, my husband and I tossed five truckloads of mulch over the fence into our vegetable garden, on top of a winter's worth of composted chicken droppings and food scraps. Oh boy.

Sunday, we planted chard, lettuce, radishes, scallions and leeks.

And today, Michelle Obama took students out into the White House garden -- "the First Garden," they're calling it -- to plant some early crops there.

The group included sixth-grade students from Stetser Elementary School in Chester, who had written to the First Lady about planting a butterfly garden at the school and their plans to add a vegetable garden. The principal of the school wrote that the garden would "make connections for our students around growing and tasting fresh fruits and vegetables. Our goal will be to connect our garden with our local community and incorporate the produce we grow into our school lunch program."

The students planted potatoes, spinach, broccoli, carrots, radishes and onions.

The current White House garden got its start in 2009, with the First Lady promoting it as a way to start a conversation about the health of the nation's children. It was the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden.