If any of you need reminding that spring isn't too far away, all you need to
do is take a walk around your gardens and observe what's happening.

That's exactly what I did today. The day was heavy with cold fogs, misty,
soaking rains, and the only sign that there was a sun was that the sky was a
lighter shade of gray.

Sitting here in the house, looking outside at those reminders in the NSSG
(not so secret gardens) further egged me on. I can see the rain's have
washed all the snow into the ground. Now everything
looks..........interesting. The older Hellebore leaves are almost
flattened, and the newer ones are just now rising out of the center of the
older leaves. I couldn't take it anymore. Besides, Rose won't go out in the
rain to do her business unless she is ready to pop, and she was making
popping sounds behind me.

I had to check the mailbox anyway, so I grabbed my fuzzy hat (no need of my
garden large brim today, the rolled edge of the fuzzy hat would be enough to
keep the moisture off my glasses, I hoped), told Rose "MAILBOX!!" with a
laugh in my voice, and she scrambled on the linolium by the nook door
anxious to go do a mad dash and her stiff happy dawg impersonation. Rose is
getting a bit of a limp in her back leg and I think it's a few things. She's
now 7, over weight and is content to just lie around. So I suspect she has a
bit of ol' Arthur creeping in now. Just like me...........And on wet,
soaked days like today, I find I keep a staff handy so that if I do trudge
down the slope on the western side, it's handy. Nothing like sliding on this
red clay mud we have for soil here on yer butt. Summer is one thing to do
that, but dead winter is not my idea of fun.

Once outside I did what I always do..I questioned why I had taken so long in
going outside. Compared to the previous day's high's in temperatures, it
was almost spring like. There's nothing like single digit temperatures and
high's in the low teens or even 10o to make a high of 47o seem like a nice
day.

I didn't need to encourage Rose, despite the rain, my presence seems to give
her enough of a courage to face those hated rain drops and she was already
off in "her" pasture, smelling the deer, coyote, skunks, possom's, and
whatever else had gone thru during the nights. The walk to the mailbox was
fruitless. No catalogs, no bills, just a sad, empty box, with one little
prickley pad cactus trying to get a toe hold at the base of the new post
next to the paved road that leads to our gravel driveway. The rest have to
be dug up and transplanted underneath the mailbox and now that the soil has
loosened up, it will be easier to do.

Looks like the mailbox needs some repairs, the hinged door has rusted off
the bolt that allows it to open, the mail lady has closed my door with a
rubber band.....ingenuity works....

As I turn to go back, I take a slow motion turn, and stop. Even though
English Mountain is totally obscurred by the fogs, and the sounds are
carrying eerily thru the trees from the interstate a mile or more away, the
smells of the ground are rising up with the fogs that are wisping upwards
like cold, gray fingers. The ground fogs lift up and clasp fingertips with
the other fogs and it's like some ethereal dance of mists and wetness.

The quiet of the ridge is punctured by the insistant power drill sound of
the various woodpeckers trying to get to those succulent cold bugs in the
trees in the surrounding woods. Sad to think that I'd prefer not to hear
that, as it's a sign that they are searching for those insidious pine borer
larval we're having such a bad infestation of here at the moment.

As it's so quiet, and even the birds are mumbling to themselves on this
miserable day, I was most surprised to hear the first strong arrogant notes
of a cardinal warming up his throat for serenades to come. The notes washed
over me and I got all tingly at the sound of him. Tearing myself away from
the non view of the mountains across the pastures and hilltops I am standing
on, and starting to feel that penetrating cold that mists and winter rains
have the ability to inflict, I started back down the gravel driveway,
slowing down to notice the remaining pads of cacti under the Acacia tree of
Miz Mary's and my eyes following outward, the now 11 other children of this
tree that only need to be severed to be successfully transplanted. Tomorrow.
With my Craftsman spade. I WILL have two or three of these incredible
shrubby trees as my own before it's all over.

I'm even thinking that I might see if I can get some regular old hens and
chicks to plant in amongst the prickly pear cactus and under the furry,
thorned pink locust branches. As hot as that spot gets during the seasons,
they would probably thrive and make me most proud.

Rose has gone deep into the pasture, way past our back fence property line,
but the pasture is deep and at one point, there is a wooded, scrubby spot
where they tried to put a pond in and didn't do it right. When you walk
down to that spot, it's really a neat hidden area. The cedar trees and other
weed trees have encircled the depression, that never was allowed to be
sealed to work, so it never held water. But I'd love to clean it up and
plant wild things amongst the wildings and in the depression. But it's not
mine and I have more than enough to do on my own almost acre.

Thru the gates that stay open, I have to admit that I am proud at how Squire
and I cleaned up the fencing that runs along the pasture. Of course I know
the honeysuckle is just laughing at us under the soil line. There were two
stumps that were well over 3 inches thick that we weren't able to get out of
the ground. And I know every piece of privet I whacked will thank me come
springtime and give me 20 or 50 sprouts in return for my kindness of
pruning. But for now, the fence row is clean to past my first compost pile.

I can't stand it. So I go thru the opening between the trumpet vine on the
post with the dead lamp that is about 15 above me, thread thru the narrow
pathway between the two raised beds, and go to the tools next to the bird
seed in the 5 gallon plastic buckets near the porch swing. Gathered up but
not put away, as I always seem to need them no matter the time of year or
dead of winter, I am almost ready to make a tool box that is off the deck
for my rakes, shovels and other necessaries of life on the slope.

I am a woman possessed. I am curious as to wheather or not I can get the
spade into the soil near the fence by the dead mimosa where it's pristine
clean. The garden mind is an amazing thing. It's really quietly plotting
and planning when we least suspect it. In no time I was over by the fence,
admiring the clean, bare and raked area that is at least three foot wide
running along the fence, and I put the point of my spade against the red
soil, put my foot on the lip, and jump on it, expecting resistance.

Now remember, we had sub zero temperatures a few times, snow cover for two
weeks running, high's barely over 15 and now here it is only 42o and it's
been raining all night and day on and off with constant heavy soaking fog.
It was an experience I'd not had in a long time. The blade of the shovel
went in clean, and to the hilt immediately causing me to almost fall on my
face. I recovered my composure, looked for Rose but she was still
unaccounted for, lost in her own doggie world of smells and such, and I
braced myself as I levered the long handle downward. I tend to like the
longer handled tools despite that I am short. they work for me. I felt
resistance. Ahhhh, something I am used to, and I started to put my back
into it, and decided not to, remembering that I almost ate clay soil a few
minutes earlier, and torqued it just a little downwards and heard a dull
thunk under the soil before the whole clump rose as the shovel lifted it up.

It was beautiful. The thunk I'd heard was a long dead mimosa root that had
no resistance to my shovel, and the soil was soft and pliable and loose like
the soils I long for from my home in years past. Before I knew it, I had a
$10 hole dug, and had walked like some possessed woman, and had plunged my
shovel into the black and red soil around the Wine and Roses weigelia I'd
planted last fall. There was no resistance. there was no time for the bush
to make roots. It came up clean. A three gallon rootball and soil came up
in one smooth motion, and I carefully lifted it and balanced the weight by
grasping the metal handle and slowly walking to the hole. It was a perfect
fit. A bit of tamping around the base, pull the clay soil around the black
I'd tucked in around the bush last fall, and the little thing looked happier
there to me than crammed so close to the fig bed.

As I straightened up, the kink in my back reminding me it was still cold and
wet outside, I noticed in the "Colorado" box a huge clump of the greenish
white mottled leaves of my arum lilies. They broke ground back in October,
but they're even more beautiful now, and not the least bit affected by the
snows. And as I look at the leaves closer, I notice tiny, grass like sprays
of leaves in tufts scattered through out the new extension. The crocuses
are up!! I also see the pointy noses of some narcissus in wads here and
there amist the debris I always leave in the beds until spring for the birds
and critters.

I feel so good about the promise of crocus, I glance over to the fig bed
where there are more arum lily leaves, not as big of a clump but noticable,
and am about to look at the branches of the lime spirea I put on the corner
of the box, when I see something unmistakeable. I bend closer, and
carefully, gently brush my finger and see there was a brave crocus had dared
to open up sometime during the snows and cold and I had missed it, because
the spent petals were folded slightly and I could barely see the speckled
color on the pale yellow of the flower as it bent head down towards the
soil. To say my heart almost burst with happiness, is a good description.

The remainder of the moments I stayed outside was spent putting the spade
back with the rest of the tools, noticing there are still too many wads of
vinca vines in the beds and I need to get in there and pull them up now
while the soil is loose and friable and it can recover from my standing on
it to get to them. I can plant the pieces down near the woods. I might
regret that later on. The spirea indeed had tight little nubbins all along
the thin branches but I had never noticed it before, the stems and twigs of
the spirea were blushed reddish.,

That triggered another thought in my head, so I walked down the dog run to
the east side of the house, around the salix, and glory bower (wow, the
salix has buds all over it!) noticing the Cornelian Cherry tree's hundred's
of buds are tightened up and not opening up as they did this time last year.
Thank goodness for garden journals. This time last year the tree had
decided it was spring and had opened up all its blossoms, causing me great
distress. And then we got that cold snap.......

Around the corner and into the tiny sloping space, I go to where I am driven
to go. Tucked next to the hellebore is two small but satisfying red twig
dogwoods. Doing what they do in the winter. I might not have too many twigs
rising up yet, but what I do have are bloody and beautiful. Come springtime
I will cut half of those to the ground in hopes to double my stems for the
next winter.

Wet sodden leaves on my pink buddelia that is struggling in the darkest
corner of the nook garden tells me it might have to be lifted and moved
somewhere else. And I bet the daylilies will have to be moved as well, it's
more a place for semi shade than anything else.

Now I'm starting to get cold to the bone, and the hat I'm wearing is
dripping rain onto my glasses, so it's time to come in and get warm. Rose
has outsmarted me. She's standing up on the small deck waiting for me. As I
go inside and wash my hands, the hybrid clyclamen's I have in the bathroom
satisfy my desire for colors for now, but already I am thinking of watching
for the pale milky blue crocus out front by the cedar stump I sat in the
front bed. Spring can't be too far away. Now if only I could find someone
who had a witch hazel for sale..................tomorrow I will water all
the cacti and remaining tropicals in the house for another breath of moist
soil.

thanks for the ramble time. there will much much more in weeks to come.

madgardener up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking English
Mountain in Eastern Tennessee zone 6b