White to Green

March. The Herald of Spring, the End of Winter. At least that's what the month means to me. Don't get me wrong...I love snow. I love driving by pristine stands of trees adorned with their mantels of white and their jewels of ice. I love the look of an unblemished field of snow. I love seeing the tiny shape of a crystalline flake, drifting onto my coat sleeve, or gleaming amongst the brightness of a snowbank.
But by February, I miss the grass and the buds, the butterflies and the birds. And I miss my gardens.
I have two; a flower garden in the front, and a vegetable/ fruit garden in the back. At the end of the growing season, I start collecting my seeds for the following year. By the beginning of March, I am ready. Out come the mini greenhouses. Wonderful things, they move about on wheels and have their own plastic zip-up covers.
Out come the styrofoam cups (why spend oodles of money on pots?)Out comes the fertilizer and the bags of dirt. And, of course, out come the seeds.
I start with the flowers. Vegetables grow more quickly, in my experience, and so I leave those until April.
This year's flower line-up includes the following: dianthus, cosmos, sweet pea (2 kinds), morning glory (four kinds), bachelor button, marigold, cascade petunia, wave petunia, delphinium, white alyssum, lavatera, phlox, bee balm, snapdragon and aster.
I am staggering my plantings this year. The first wave was started on March 1st. Amazingly, by the 3rd, some of the cosmos were already starting to poke their heads out of the soil.