Gardening ... or the last gasp of winter?

The mailman brings piles new seed catalogs while our garden sleeps in a dreary cloak.  Each day lends us a few minutes more of daylight and draws us closer to the  hope of new life.  We can't resist looking in the beds for a hint of green popping through to reveal the crocus bursting forth announcing the end of winter.  And what a winter it has been!  With the heavy burdens of snow this year our shrubbery is bent and broken.  Our young pups have created a landscape of their own pocking our grass with craters from their treasure digs.  Left over projects from fall make clean up more daunting than ever and today we peruse the catalogs.   As with all gardeners, we are never quite satisfied with the choices or placement of all of our plants.  There are perennials to move and annuals to plant in the bedding trays.  And we have a vision of a garden that will be perfect this year.

Planning our garden is such a joy.  A true gardener is never satisfied with how things are - regardless of our lack of perfectionism and the reckless placing of our plants we find great joy in planning and plotting our course.  This year we plan to start seeds early and minimize the purchasing of bedding plants.  What do we plant?  No Vegetables.  Fruits that we rarely taste but leave for the birds to plunder at their pleasure.  Herbs for taste and aroma. Flowers, flowers, flowers.

Our first seeds arrived from Park Seeds this week and we bought the planting medium and tray for seeding the early plants.  Petunias, marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, salvia, alyssum, and asters lay in wait for soil and water to nourish them. 

As the winter wanes the blahs continue, we anxiously watch for the first hope of spring.  Today we were rewarded with crocus bursting through the earth begging for a peek at the sun. 

 Iris will soon follow and then the full bloom of summer.