Spring has snuck back into Cleveland. And I think I know why.  It has to be because my order from Baker’s Creek Seeds came today.  Seeds, glorious seeds – tomatoes, melon and squash! While we’re in the mood – morning glories and quinoa.*  Nearly sixty degrees, seeds in hand… What could be better?

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I am not thinking I can even consider growing ANYTHING yet.  This is Cleveland, after all.  I mean, you know how the rest of the country pictures Mother Nature as this sweet, beautiful (maybe even matronly) woman covered in flowers and foliage?  Here in Cleveland, we tend to think of her as clad in black leather and stilettos carrying the optional riding crop.  Sure, there’s flowers but they tend to be tattoos and intertwined with Satan and, strangely enough , fluffy kittens.   When it comes to Mother Nature, we Clevelanders have been well trained to say “Yes Mistress, can we have another?”  But man, she makes it hurt so good sometimes.

But She is a good mood for the next few days so I will be thankful and not look too hard for the next round of winter punishment. 

I took a long walk today to take in some vitamin D and fresh air.  The snow has half melted in some places but mostly it has compacted into a crunchy ice.  The warm weather over the next few days should clear that away as well. This leaves behind a gruesome mess of salty mud and crushed lawns filled with the debris of passing dogs and children (and it is really hard to tell the difference between a sodden mitten and a turd, let me tell you).

Regardless of the fact that this thaw is short lived, it is a signal to the gardener inside me.  Spring is coming. Spring is sending her forces to save me from the tyranny of winter.  This is her advanced scout sent ahead to suss the situation and bring us POWs (prisoners of winter) some hope and sustenance.  Never fear, Cleveland!  Spring is coming, and she will fight with all her might to free us all (in the next 3-4 months)!

*Yes, I said quinoa.  Apparently it might grow here.  I am a sucker for odd things.

I find it incredible how messy a garden can get over the course of the winter. I mean, granted, I did not actually clean the garden at the end of the summer last year, but I am sure that it did not look this bad when the snow fell.

Every year, around this time of year, I am reminded of when we bought this house. It was February and as we walked the lightly snow covered back yard, my husband commented that my neighbor must be a slob. I looked across the fence and promptly smacked my husband upside the head. “That’s not a mess,” I told him, “that is a garden.” We put an offer in on the house that day. Never underestimate the value of a gardener neighbor.

How is it a garden turns into that in just a few months? Is Jack Frost that much of a slob? My initial thought on this is, “Of course he is, he is male.” But that probably isn’t fair (even though I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of this with 3 male children and a husband under one roof.)

The past several weeks have been spent picking up after nature. Dead stems, crushed and twisted under snow and sleet, are now surfacing. Gnomes, mugged by brutal, cold winds, lay sprawled and violated among dazed perennials and dead annuals. It is so bad, you fully expect the 6 o’clock news to be on your doorstep any minute to film it. And that is just the front yard. The carnage you find in the back yard is only fit to be shown on the 11 o’clock news when all the kiddies are in bed and the fight for ratings demands that holy horror be shown.

How did it get this bad? Granted, I got lazy at the end of the season and COMPLETELY blew off cleaning up the garden, but I know that it did not look this bad. And so thus begins the big garden clean up. I suppose I can’t complain too much. The spring is finally here and cleaning up after Old Man Winter is not so bad, as long as he doesn’t come back for a good six months to start mussing up my garden all over again.

Seeds ordered…. Check
Tomato plants ordered…. Check
New trees (Royal Empress Tree and Fragrant Tea Olive) ready to be planted…. Check
Container garden ready to be moved outside…. Check
Warm weather…. Damn

You know, I am doing my part here. I have everything ready to go. I think the least that Mother Nature could do is accommodate me a little.

Ok, so I am way, way early, but March is what I like to think of as the equivalent of the last month of pregnancy.

It has been my opinion that pregnancy lasts 1 month too long. That’s why we say it is 9 months when in fact it is closer to 10. We don’t want it to be 10 months, it is just one month too long. By week 36, you are ready for that baby to come out. You are the size of a blue whale, your back hurts, the baby thinks your bladder is a bouncy ball and your belly button is a speed bag. The prospect of pushing an eight pound (if you are lucky) “bundle-of-joy” out a hole that is a tenth its size suddenly seems like a fantastic deal.

This is March in Cleveland. The last month of pregnancy. Winter was cute way back in December, all pretty and exciting. But time goes on and it gets less fun and less fun (do you know what constant swollen ankles and hemorrhoids is like?) Then you get to March, and you are done. You are so, so, so, so, so, so done.

I am ready to start gardening. I’ve got the planting directions in hand and I am ready to meet my garden for this year. I’m ready for the labor. I have everything I need to be a caring, loving gardener. I promise I will love my garden with all my heart. JUST GET SPRING THE HELL HERE ALREADY!

Well, the official start of Spring happened today. Though, that is a point of contention between my husband and myself. He thinks Spring starts with Opening Day. I think it starts when I feel the overwhelming need to weed a flower bed.

The air was warm today and the quackgrass was calling. I gleefully ripped it out by the handful and mercilessly attacked the wild garlic while I was at it. The just burgeoning dandelions did not have a chance as I wretched them out of the rain dampened soil. Chaos and destruction in the weed world is a good day in my book.

I find it kind of funny that I do not consider the appearance of flowers to be the start of Spring. The showing of snowdrops and Siberian iris are good signal flags that Spring is on her slow-ass way, but their appearance is not the start of Spring in my mind. The early flowers are more like the Secret Service of Spring. Making sure that all is ready and that winter has not laid a devious plot to assassinate her when she arrives.

But the fist time I fail to make it to my front door after coming home from the grocery store because I just wanted to pull one errant blade of grass… and 2 hours, one ruined pair of jeans and “groceries still in the car” later… this has got to be Spring.

My husband can keep his silly Indian Opener as the start of Spring. I know for a fact it snowed on opening day last year, so what kind of Spring start is that? I will stick with the tried and true method of “Oh, that should not be growing there. I think I will just pull it” as the real measure of when the Spring starts.

Light & Dark. Black & White. Yin & Yang. Ben & Jerry. Today, the world is in perfect balance with the sun spending an equal amount of time on each side of the world.

Astrologically, today is the first day of Spring, though most years you wouldn’t know it. But it happened that Mother Nature was feeling obliging and it was rather warm this particular afternoon.

Vernal Equinox tends to be thought of as one of those mysterious Druid holidays involving wild, naked dancing closely followed by the practice of porn level fertility rites, but in fact it is a much more staid, much older and more widely recognized celebration date.

Before Druids ever existed in the world, the Irish were celebrating the equinox. As did the Saxons, the Mayans, the Romans, the Native Americans, the Persians, the Japanese and just about any other culture that had someone who had the wits to claim that they were too busy deciphering the stars to go out and hunt or work in the fields. So important was this date, that many cultures considered it to be a New Year celebration.

Even before modern science, cultures were fascinated by the perfect balance that occurred on this date. And truly it is a day to celebrate. The days will getting longer and my garden will be growing soon. The vernal equinox is the natural equivalent to Christmas to a dedicated gardener like myself.

I am happy to announce that I am now the proud mama to a bunch of bouncing babies! If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s now illegal to smoke anywhere public in Ohio, I would pass out cigars.

Now let’s just see if I can keep my new babies alive past the true leaf stage. It’s the terrible true leafs that give people so much trouble.

The magnolias are in bloom in Cleveland and I am not there to see them. I am just the jet setter this week and I am now in Boston for a business trip. But I did get a few hours at home to see my beautiful magnolia tree.

My magnolia tree is bigger than my house, and I live in a pretty tall house. When it is in its glory, it is just breath taking.

Every year I say that next year I will have a magnolia party in my back yard when the tree is in full bloom. *sigh* but not this year. Maybe next year.

Ugh… I’m just pooped. I spent a good portion of the day outside.

The beginning of the season is always tough.

First of all, you are way out of shape due to the fact you did absolutely nothing during the winter. Your butt is fat and your muscles are weak. Hence, you work you butt off and end up in some serious pain the first couple of warm weather weeks.

Second, this early in the season, there is very little looking lush and green. Even your evergreens look a little beat up and weather worn. When the blush of the first blooms of spring wears off, all you see is a desolate, half-alive wasteland that was once your garden. You know that it will come back and be beautiful again, but… There is this little twinge in your heart that says it’s too much. That this year your yard won’t come back. But fortunately, Mother Nature always proves us wrong.

I cleaned out the peony bed today and started on the pond. I also laid out the dimensions of my Grass Couch, for the Couch-Grow-Along and did some weeding the herb bed.

I am exhausted.

I could not go outside today.

My two youngest have both vomiting and diarrhea. Yeah, didn’t want to take them out. Shame they were sick. It was 60F+ today. At least I got to put the top down on my convertible when I went to the grocery store after my husband got home.

But yesterday, I got a lot of time in my yard. Did some weeding and cleaning, and a little mourning. See this is a bitter-sweet time of year for gardeners. We are so excited about everything coming back, but little by little we realize that some of the babies and old friends we cared for last year are no longer among the living.

I still have a few more weeks to hope that they will return, but there are a few that I am certain are not coming back. The primroses and peach tree are definitely dead. I have always, always wanted primrose to grow and it has never lasted in my yard more than a season or two. I had gotten hope as the named variety primrose that I had in my shade bed had made it through the previous winter. But no sign of it after this winter.

The peach tree is gone as well. It was a gift from one of Jeff’s former co-workers who was from Italy. It held on for 4 years but Cleveland cold finally got the better of it.

Then there are a few blank spots in the beds that I know there should be something but I can’t remember exactly what I planted there. They are mostly babies, bought spur of the moment last year and not strong enough to make it through the cold.

So, let’s take a moment to mourn a few lost friends, even if we can’t always remember who exactly they were.

Still cold. But I couldn’t do any gardening today if it was warm anyway. Today is the Official Buzzard Day. What is Buzzard Day? Well, Capistrano has swallows, and Hinckley (a suburb of Cleveland) has buzzards, well turkey vultures but it doesn’t sound as cool to say Turkey Vulture Day, now does it?

Jeff’s uncle lives in Hinckley and he has a party every year for Buzzards Day. We always go.

The buzzards actually came back a few days ago. I saw one on the highway eating a dead animal. Yummy! But this is the official day. Welcome back Buzzards!