Each year, the holidays are barely over before I am already looking forward to spring and to what new gardening adventures I will be able to embark upon. My first spring here in these woods was in 2000, and the snow was barely off the ground in March before I was assembling the frames for my raised garden beds.

Traditional gardening is next to impossible here on this hilly terrain. There isn’t an inch of soil that doesn’t reveal, after much digging and cursing, the small end of a giant boulder, and I have long since given up the fight to unearth them all. It wasn’t long before I realized that, if I was to garden at all here, it would have to be in raised beds or not at all.

The first spring, my tiny back yard was bare, save for a blank circle of gravel where an above-ground swimming pool had stood during the previous owner’s occupancy. A few wheelbarrows-full and a bag of grass seed later, the spot was just a memory, and I proceeded to build a few raised beds back there. I planted and grew so many wonderful things those first few years, before the tree canopy eventually closed in, depriving the area of the minimum sunlight that most plants need to survive. Morning glories, pumpkins, green beans, marigolds, garlic, and of course, my dollar-store garden, which is nothing more than a few dozen cheap packets of annual seeds strewn randomly across a prepared area and given over to nature’s mercy to do with as she will. And she has never disappointed me. Each year, these seeds come up in no particular order, filling at least one small area under the trees with as much color as is possible back there.

As little as I am able to garden here now, I still enjoy the seed catalogs that appear in my mailbox, tempting me with botanical treasures that are now far beyond my capabilities. I could have the trees in the back yard trimmed, but at the rate at which this entire area has filled in these last 10 years, I’d have to cut down trees that provide me with precious shade on the hottest afternoons of the year. So a compromise is now in order, and I will manage once again by tucking a tomato plant in here or a few beans there and calling it good. Each year I’m devoting more space to shade-loving perennials, graciously accepting the donations that friends cull from their own overgrown gardens.

A dear friend of mine from Biddeford has provided me with many treasures that now grace my modest garden. Her father, who passed away two years ago, had a spectacular garden, growing everything from coneflowers to raspberries. I dug a few plants out of it, but not without some wistfulness. I drove by that garden often in years past and always enjoyed seeing her father out there, bent to some task, in total communion with the earth that repaid him a hundredfold for his efforts. But it wasn’t until this year that I got close enough to it to fully appreciate what he’d done there and how lovingly he had nurtured that small acre to such spectacular fruition. He spent years enriching the soil, so that driving a fork into it was in itself a gift to one accustomed to hitting large stones each time she does so. More so than having plants to fill in my bare spots, I am honored to have them here where I will be reminded daily of the man who made their existence possible. I only hope I can do them justice on this rocky hillside.

It’s early yet, not quite mid-January, too soon to get excited about the garden, too soon to start any seeds. I think I’ll just fill a small pot with dirt and set it on my window shelf so I can plant a few of the radish seeds that are all that’s left of last year’s arsenal. They probably won’t amount to much, but it will be grand to see their tops appear in the soil. Be it a bean plant in the garden in June or a few seeds on a windowsill, it’s always a miracle when they break free of the soil to start their new lives.

”“ Rachel Lovejoy is a freelance writer living in Lyman. She can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.