The Garden Misses its Entrance Cue – and That's Not All Bad

Well - As I write this, I still have about three hours before spring is officially underway. It is scheduled to start March 20 at 8 p.m.

And I think the garden finally got the hint.

I was originally worried that spring truly wasn't coming this year, because nothing - absolutely nothing - was happening in the yard.

Well - the heath is still blooming, but that's because it is winter-blooming heath. But that's the extent of what I've seen until today.

Last year I looked into my side yard on New Year's Day and found the first Helleborus niger flower. It looked a bit chilled and uncertain, but it was there, only the teeniest bit late to live up to its popular name of Christmas rose.

This year I checked in January and saw nothing. I did the same in February. Last week I finally saw some buds, but they are still tightly shut and clinging to the base of the plant as though huddling there to keep warm. Down there they still can take advantage of the blanket of mulch - and apparently, they prefer that to springing up and showing off as they usually do.

I had a mental image of gardeners everywhere, noses pressed against windows too quickly frosted with the combination of breath and chill, looking in vain for some sign - a small green shoot, the tip of a bulb piercing the earth, anything! - and turning away, desolate. Spring has always come before, but who is to say we can depend on it to keep on coming? How many things that we thought we could depend on have let us down? Let me count the ways. . . .

But this morning I looked out my window, prepared for the usual depressing routine - but never got close enough to the glass to leave the usual nose print. Because I saw about three dozen snowdrops standing well above the mulch. They aren't exactly blooming but the buds have expanded to show white. So at long last, I can relax and start to believe that spring - the gardener's spring, not just a season in name only - will come.

The wet spring we are having is still further call for optimism. Maybe this will be a better all around year in the garden. Maybe we all will have time to worry about making things pretty, instead of constantly implementing emergency methods of just trying to keep the garden alive. Maybe I can hope that many more things survived the parched summer than I dared to believe. The hellebores may not be leaping into the spotlight - but they are alive.

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