Harbingers of Spring

During our northern frost free months, from June through September, I have two potted plants on my small porch, red geraniums and rosemary. When cold threatens, I bring them indoors to winter in my south-facing living room windows. Along with a never-blooming but still alive orchid that resides among books on a table, they are my only house plants.

It's nice to see a bit of greenery in the house during winter, but what I truly love are the flowers that begin to appear in February as the days lengthen. They are a signal that the turn of the season toward spring has begun.

Even outdoors the flowers are yearning upwards: with this year's limited snow cover, the Snowdrops are free to show their green heads above the dark earth.

Upstairs in the house, under grow-lights, the leeks and onions are the first of the garden vegetables that I start from seed. I don't plant the next round of seeds––early broccoli, peppers, eggplant–––until April, so these alliums are a cheerful reminder, in the midst of winter, that the time for playing in the dirt, and watching the magic of growing things, is not far off.