Hints of Spring

I woke up this morning to budding daffodils, hyacinth and crocus, and for once this week, I'm not talking about my Farmville farm.

Spring is springing around my house. I'm a little surprised so many bulbs have survived our wet winter in the heavy clay soil of Kansas. Some of them even look like they need to be divided. That won't be easy. I've a 70 year old maple tree whose roots cover every square inch of my front garden. Trying to dig through that is like trying to dig through a fishing net.

All my flowers are springing through mud. I cannot walk in my yard without bringing bits of it into the house. Those who know gardens understand this means I cannot garden. Walking on wet dirt compresses it into something unusable.

March is a tease. March brings days of sun and 50 degrees followed by days of snow and ice. Officially, the last frost date is May 15. Most gardeners can't wait that long and willingly keep a pile of blankets near the door to cover their tender annuals at night.

I discovered gardening in grad school. My roommate at the time was patient with my efforts (successful, for the most part) to grow from seed, transplant peonies (I love peonies) and save wild live-forever. Avid gardeners have seen live-forever in seed catalogs as sedum and know you can buy it for lots and lots of money. In Kansas, it grows everywhere for free. Maybe years ago somebody paid lots and lots of money and that's how sedum got here. You can drop a clump of live-forever in the middle of a gravel driveway and it will blossom in the fall, survive the winter, and grow new plants in the spring. Hence the common name. 

Those are a few things missing from Farmville: hyacinths, peonies, and sedums. I'll have to go outside to see those.

But not quite yet.