Spring Fever

I am ready for spring with its green grass, flower buds peaking from the ground, sunshine and warm afternoons. Here in Iowa, it’s still a bit early to start flower seeds indoors, but a couple of weeks ago I planted a pot of cosmos anyway and situated it on a south-facing windowsill. They give me hope spring will return even if the outlook is grim now. I couldn’t resist picking up a couple of seed packets at the local farm store recently grabbing one giant, double zinnias and some moss roses. The seeds remain in their packets on my desk promising that within a few weeks, the snow will melt and spring will begin to blossom.

Thoughts of spring remind me that this year’s abundant snowfall, undoubtedly, will make for wet ground conditions. Although we have some pasture in a “flood zone,” most of our ground is high enough to avoid any chance of flooding. However, soggy ground could put my much-anticipated spring-flowering bulbs at risk. I guess this year we’ll really find out how good our drainage patterns and systems are around here!

Lately I’ve been reading more and more about global warming’s impact on the USDA hardiness zone map. For my garden, this means I’m now a zone 5 instead of the zone 4/5 from 10 years ago. The difference from my point of view is minimal as I will likely continue planting the same things, but weather patterns like Él Niño make me wonder if things are changing more rapidly than experts can document. While it’s true every garden is different from one year to the next, I suspect my gardening methods need an overhaul to keep pace with the rapidly shifting climate.

Even though I inherited the original garden that came with the farm when we purchased it eight years ago, I have labored to expand and enhance its beauty and consider it my own creation. My “methods” are nothing more than a series of experiments to determine what works and what I like. My philosophy is that if I don’t like something or it isn’t thriving, I dig it up and try it somewhere else. The results are usually better transplanting an existing plant than bringing in a new one grown in a greenhouse (and much more economical).

Whatever the weather brings, my garden and I will work it out together just as we’ve done for the past eight years. I used to think I would get to a point with this particular hobby where I could shift into maintenance mode and coast along easily performing the necessary tasks each season. The trouble is, the tasks vary from year to year, and the process is never really the same twice. Perhaps that’s the real allure of gardening: not knowing what you will get in the end.