SPRING IS COMING!
Living here in Southern California at this time of year, I like to offer hope to those of you living in colder climes — Spring is coming!!!
I have eaten strawberries from my container garden already and have potatoes and onions rising from the soil. It will soon be the same in your own garden, I am sure. I don’t say this to make you envious, but rather to offer you a bit of home if your garden is still covered in snow and the ground frozen as hard as rock.
I grew up in a small town in northern Ohio, so despite my 26 years here in Los Angeles, I still remember the bone-chilling cold, the snow drifts, the dirty, ice hard snow frozen along the streets. I also remember, though, the sheer joy when Spring arrived. It would come in fits and starts — often snowing on the first day of Spring, but soon the leaves would begin to appear on the 100-year-old maples lining West Main Street, the grass would begin to green and grow and the apple trees in the disused orchard behind our house would burst into bloom.
In a farming community, Spring was a big deal, of course. Equipment was being repaired all Winter long in concrete and steel workshop barns and would soon be back in the fields. Some farmers, ever eager to get started, would find themselves mired in the wet soil when they tried to get into the fields too soon. Mud was simply part of the season, though, and we all learned again to leave our shoes outside the door whenever we entered into the house.
If you are like most gardeners, you are planning and preparing your garden for 2013. I would love to hear what is happening — or about to happen — in your garden. You can share your garden with myself — and other AGN readers — on most of the social networks. A Gardener’s Notebook is on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and more. You’ll find links to all of these in the sidebar to your right.
Until next time…Keep Digging!
