Will We Have Pickles for the 4th of July?

Whoever said, "Great things often come in small packages" must have done a bit of gardening. Friday afternoon I picked the last of my lettuce from the two window boxes. After fluffing (is that a gardening term?), and watered the drying dirt I sprinkled cucumber seeds across the surface and a little more dirt across the seeds. It seemed there was only room for about half the seeds in the little package so I made use of a couple of egg cartons. Punching drainage holes in what would be the bottoms, I filled them with dirt and smoothed the surface. Using the point of a pencil, I made indentions to hold each of the carefully placed seeds and snugged the dirt in over the holes and gave the whole kit and kaboodle a misting of water.
Then the worrying began. Was the soil too wet? Had it dried too much in the heat of the day? Yesterday it seemed that it would rain so I tucked the egg cartons under a table and continued to worry about the seeds in the window boxes. But no rain - so I misted everything again this morning. This evening, and it's only Monday, when I went to check the dryness, or the wettness of my little seed beds, I found their primary leaves rising above the surface and couldn't wait to get the camera to share with you.
These are pickling cucumbers and I have such a great recipe for Sweet and Sour Dill Pickles that my mouth started watering the instant I began to calculate the days to maturity to see if we would have pickles by the 4th of July. Silly me, even if these are harvested and processed and looking beautiful in their jars, they are better after they "cure" a while. Fortunately, I have a jar or two left from last summer's harvest.