One of my first horticulture experiences involved my grandparents and a sandbox. They appropriated my sandbox – I guess I’d outgrown it, if that’s possible. It was in a sunny garden area beside their house. I thought their yard was a magical place. Tall pine trees provided all the straw they could ever use as mulch and gave a cathedral like presence to the whole property.

We’re only three weeks into spring and already the last of the camellias are fading, the classic azaleas are past their peak, and mowing the raggedy-looking lawn is beginning to look like an immediate necessity. Barely spring, yet summer weather is announcing an early arrival. There will be plenty of blooming beauty coming with the hot days, of course, and perhaps it will last longer than the short-lived season of spring eruptions of bloom.

Poets just love spring. It’s the season in which a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. The season which inspired Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils. Spring inspires me, too. I can hardly wait for the first shipments of plants and I rush to my local box stores and nurseries and what do I find? You guessed it.  Hundreds of petunias (iffy here, at best). Thousands of impatiens and marigolds. Pansies everywhere. Oh, and maybe a few flats of begonias.