You'd think after living up in this neck of the woods for 30 years, I'd be used to the idea that, while other places might be enjoying the first daffodils, we're digging out our rain boots and "wellies," as the Brits call them, keeping them by the door and hoping that mud season will be a short one this year.
Allow me to explain. Mud Season, as we call it here, starts around the end of March when the snows begin to melt off and is replaced with days and days of rain. If we are extremely lucky, we may get a day or two a week of sunshine and temps above 45. Then it's back to the rain. I know the farmers need it to get the fields ready to plant, but here in town all I want is to be able to look out of the window and see the daffodils, and the snowdrops, and the crocuses, all pushing up and bursting out with color after the cold and drab winter. Right now I have to be thankful for the neighbors' green lawns (from all that rain), while everything else is mud covered, mud splattered, and must plain muddy!
But fear not! What is my remedy for Mud Season? Indoor gardening! I've put away the winter decorations in my tiny tabletop garden and pulled out those that tell me it is, truly, spring. I've even purchased my first packets of seeds from the garden department at the store. It's a bit too early to start my basil and spearmint seeds, even indoors, because of the very real possibility of an April frost or snowstorm up here that turns the temperatures indoors damp and chilly regardless of how many grow lights I have going (maybe this is the year I buy an indoor greenhouse?). Nevertheless, just seeing the packets of seeds, the pots filled with soil, and my tiny garden tools laid out, helps me remember that, once Mud Season has passed and those first, tiny shoots poke up through the ground, Spring will have genuinely arrived inside and out, and the growing season will be here. Thank heavens for that!
And so it is.
