Now that spring is officially here, we have a delightful season to enjoy. There will be many ups and downs. Spring is after all, full of windy, bone-chilling days and heavenly, balmy days with strong sunshine and light breezes. Everyone agrees that the primrose, crocus and daffodils are late in arriving this year. My first garden primrose bloomed only today (Primula sibthorpii), a far cry from its early arrival the last two years. We have been spoiled I guess if we look at years past. But the real gardener is the sort of person that handles these weather related events as part of spring and knows that warmer days will come. Patience is a value that gardeners learn after years and years of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. If you're a gardener that plants just for food or for flowers, you understand that this is the cool season and there is a limit to what can be planted with successful results. Furthermore the triumph of successfully raising cool crop plants in the proper season, is something that becomes a badge of honor for the gardener that is first learning the ropes. Beautiful lettuce heads before bolting and early flowering sweet peas are just two examples fit for bragging rights when the season is young. The time for planting these cool loving plants is late February and early March. The snow of this past winter was the best thing for cool loving vegetables like kale, lettuce, spinach and onions. Underneath that snow blanket it remained thirty-two degrees. Our cool season is relatively short, some years better than others. If these plants aren't put out early enough, the gardener looses that window for growing them well. Flowering sweet peas are often dismissed as something that can't be grown here, but a little experimentation with micro-climates and timing will reap fabulous results.

As for other flowering plants in the garden, the month of March is about helleborus, primrose, and crocus. Early April is bluets, daffodils, and viburnums. The end of April (a full month from now) is phlox, tulips, and euphorbia. It will be late April and early May before you can consider planting tomatoes, peppers, marigolds, basil, and impatiens (plant when night temperatures remain above 50 degrees). So why are impatiens, fibrous rooted begonias and caladiums for sale in the big box stores by the first of April? I suppose that March was a marketing success. Sadly another thought is that so many people purchased early, killed their heat loving plants and came back for more. Phooey! Don't get fooled by a few nice days, the season is young.