“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt”.

Margaret Atwood

Spring has sprung!

While the phrase “spring has sprung” is just a play on words, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a psychological component behind the saying. It is my observation that it takes spring awhile to get going. The equinox rolls around, but any obvious signs of springs arrival seems to take forever to arrive.

But once it finally does get going; BOOM!, seemingly overnight spring has arrived in all its glory.

As an example, check out these pictures I took of MrsVintage’s peony over a span of eleven days:

Mindboggling growth in less than two weeks.

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I’m trying an experiment this year. I love me some home grown tomatoes, but my efforts over the past few years have been quite disappointing. Lots of blossom end-rot and fungal issues. So this year I’ve decided to grow tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets. Growing them this way will probably be more labor intensive than growing them in the ground, but if later this summer I can dig my chompers into a home grown tomato, the effort will be well worth it!

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I’ve mentioned several times that spring flowering bulbs are the redheaded stepchild in my garden. They’re ok, but far from my favorite. Let me provide yet another example of why I feel this way.

Hybrid tulips are notorious for disappearing over time. The first spring after planting their flower display is amazing. But over the next several years the blooms get less and less impressive. In many cases, the tulips may just flat out disappear forever!

Case in point: See these orange tulips growing along the front walkway? At one time, not so long ago, there were a dozen of these in this border. This year they are down to three.

Species tulips* on the other hand can, if placed in the right conditions, multiply and naturalize over a large area. I may have to look into planting some of those this autumn.

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To deter rabbits this year, I am adding another weapon to my arsenal: Irish Spring bar soap. Supposedly, rodents detest the smell of Irish Spring. I have no idea if this is true, and I’m not going to carry out an experiment to find out. I’m just going to throw little slices of the bar soap around hard hit areas in hopes it will work in conjunction with the other deterrents.

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One thing I have come to realize is that the Winter blues and/or Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD) don’t just turn off like a light switch when the spring equinox occurs. It takes time for the blues to loosen their grip. I have observed that my symptoms start to ease sometime in April, and (for me) they seem to lift entirely in mid-May. There comes a day when the sun is bright, the trees and shrubs are cloaked in leaves and the birds are chirping away and I realize that I actually feel pretty good.

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Been on several bicycle rides so far this spring. Not much to report on that, except to note that riding on a trainer or a stationary bike in the colder months does not seem to confer much benefit when it comes time to actually ride outside. Or at least it doesn’t seem to provide much benefit to me. Maybe if I were more consistant in my training, but riding indoors is so boring!

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So there you go, just a few of the observations of spring that has been bouncing around my cranium.

How fares your spring so far?

* ‘Species’ tulips are tulips that have not been crossbred; in other words, they’re the original tulips. ‘Hybrid’ tulips are ones that have been bred to improve some quality of the original tulips. Better color or more disease resistance for example.