Today spring seems like a highly overrated season. As much as I relish the chance to write about the idea of renewal, second chances, opportunity, and new beginnings, spring in the Midwest generally stinks, and regularly fails to deliver. Sane science would point to persistent and predictable years of late freezes, regularly cold temperatures in March and April, ice storms, a winter’s worth of trash in the yard that the winter snow mercifully hid. One could black out from it. The worst day of winter arrives here in March, and that worst day continues relentlessly way into April.
I never take any solace from the science. I keep looking for signs, for that day, that spring has emerged. I am a hopeless romantic-never mind history, reality, or common sense. I have company; what gardener has not signed up lock, stock, and phlox divaricata for a new season?
I see no signs of a revolution in my emotional expectations for spring. I am the same I have always been, only more so, given my age. No birds singing today; today I am crabby and impatient.
How I design for spring-I think winter. Early, mid, and late winter. Vile winter, endless winter, sunless winter-this is what we have.
In the interest of feeling better, I plan soon to blog myself out on the topic of structure in the landscape.
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