“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” ~ Mark Twain

As I walked up toward my front door one day last week, I glanced down at the ground beneath my kitchen window and realized that I could see the grass. Oh, it wasn’t the rich lush green of summer, but more of a brownish-yellow with bits of other decaying vegetation matting it down here and there. But it was grass all right! And at that point in time, when winter isn’t quite a memory yet but spring isn’t all that far off, I was happy to see even that small bit of what I like to call my “garden.”

It comes over me every year about this time…this intense need for color and vibrancy of the sort not produced by wind and blowing snow. So the least little peek I get of bare grass is enough to push me over the edge, not of despair but of hope and enthusiasm. Then, when it snows again, as it is apt to do in March here in Maine, and I lose sight of that small strip of bare ground, I have to remind myself of how transitory it all is at this point and that whatever has obliterated that promising bit of soil will be short-lived.

There is no way to enunciate the word “winter” with any degree of lightness, while the phonemes in the word “summer” imply a different, albeit warmer, sort of weightiness. As for “fall,” that says it all. The word immediately conjures up images of a declension of time, a dropping away of something. Even “autumn” carries a tone of wistfulness that is the opposite of what we feel as the midwinter months vanish into the past. But as for the word “spring,” it is impossible to deny its hopeful notes. The very word is light and airy and, well, springs from the tongue as does all that it implies leaps from the soul.

It is, of course, much too soon to be plying the soil. But it’s not too soon to think about it. And in fact, I read just the other day that a certain local greenhouse is already in the process of sorting seeds and filling trays with starting mix in anticipation of another growing season. Seed catalogs have been dotting mail deliveries since January, and I even bought a bag of potting soil the other day, along with a few packets of seeds, in preparation for my own reentry into the world of gardening.

This will mark my fourth growing season here, and I have no reason to doubt that I’ll have the same success I’ve had in the previous three. In what little space I have to work with, I’ve managed to cram quite a bit of lushness and color, and all without much effort. I don’t spend a fortune on this either. My natural frugality kicks in, and I am able to achieve splendid results on just a few dollars. This involves a mix of annual seeds that I sow directly into the soil and greenhouse varieties that are more difficult to start from seeds and that I transfer to a few decorative pots.

It helps that at least one former tenant put a few perennials in, namely Shasta daisies, a red climbing rose, and a gorgeous yellow primrose. My own contributions to the perennial delegation so far have included a mint plant which has already demonstrated its aggressiveness in the form of tiny shoots appearing several feet from the main plant; and a chives plant that keeps me supplied with trimmings for my summer salads. In time, whoever mows the lawn here will get the distinct aroma of mint as the blade cuts into the offspring!

I’m counting the days now and, like the flocks of robins I’ve been seeing, am not letting any late-winter snow events stifle my anticipation. As I walk along the path to my door, I wonder if this is how those perennials feel as they wait just below the soil’s surface or the grass waiting to rise from its dormant winter mat or the buds straining to open on the oak trees to green my world again…this sense of impatience and restlessness, this spiritual bounciness, this eagerness to get going, this straining to be born again.

To give this feeling, this sensation, a name would somehow spoil the fun, so it’s best to simply indulge in whatever it is that is making quicker work of chasing the winter blahs away. Better to just enjoy how the sun sinks later below the tree-line and how the birds’ songs are much livelier and their notes more hopeful. It’s not for us to ever question Nature’s ways but to simply enjoy them. After all, what amount of complaining on our part has ever compelled her to do anything differently?