I love spring. I love it not. I love spring. I love it not. As you might have heard, the winter of 2023-24 is going down in history as the hottest on record for the contiguous U.S. in 130 years of record keeping, according to NOAA. A couple of weeks ago it was 60° in Colorado.
I took advantage of the sunshine and planted beets, swiss chard, carrots, kale, arugula, radishes, snow and snap peas, and three different kinds of lettuce in my garden. That was March 10th.
The next week, we got almost three feet of wet snow!
This is the diabolical, tricksterish quality of nature. Luckily, these crops are frost resistant and the snow melted over the following week. But even if this snow had proved murderous to my crops, I would have noted the event and learned from it.
I like to experiment with the timing of planting my spring garden. When I looked back at my planting journal, I saw that last year I had planted my spring garden a full month later. In 2020 it was just about the same time as this year. When I’m working in my own garden, I’m experimenting. I push the boundaries of planting and seasonality so that I can incorporate this knowledge into my designs and my clients can benefit.
Sometimes, in early spring when I compare the weather in Colorado and Northern California, Colorado is actually a bit warmer. At this time of year, I am reminded of the frontier wildness of this place, which brings me blue-bird days followed by blizzards. We see snow, floods and fires. Crocuses break through the snow while seeds do their secret work of germinating underground.
The unpredictability of this time of year has its own kind of magic. Waking up to snow on my terrace after spending the previous day in my shirt-sleeves reminds me that nature toys with us all. At the same time, spring is taking hold and my garden will grow. I’ll continue to observe, adjust and try to play along.
