Look what I found in my backyard...

Daffodils!  Daffodils! That means spring is sort of happening now, right?

Every year around this time I think that winter will linger for as many months as it takes to get to the end of the year and that I will never, ever see spring again. Or summer. Or fall. Just winter, winter, winter forever and ever, as if the house I live in had moved itself to Narnia. I know that's silly but some years I truly feel in my bones that winter will never end.

I rely on one book to get me through this every year. I hadn't thought to get it out yet since my mind has been distracted with other things. But now with this sudden appearance of daffodils (and tulips!) erupting from the temporarily thawed ground, I don't think I need the book to convince me that spring is on its way...but you might. :-)

The name of the book is "Dirt: The Lowdown on Growing a Garden with Style" by Dianne Benson. It was written by a woman who was in the fashion industry who carries her fashion sense into the garden, along with some very strong opinions about things. :-) I  first bought this book around the time I started my garden and pretty much adopted all of her opinions about what are good and not so good plants. I think the only thing I didn't adopt was her opinion about what to wear in the garden because I'm such a slob...not that I wouldn't like to surprise myself one year by following her example of always having an extra pocket in the gardening outfit for a tube of lipstick. 

"The most vivid image I hold dear of a true gardener is the balmy, sunlit, uniquely English day when my incomparable True Brit old boyfriend, Timothy Andreae, took me to the Family Lodge in Hampshire to meet Mother. She was, appropriately, in her rose garden. In my now calm recollection, it appears as quite the fantastic garden, but at the time--so mesmerized by the fading, bald Persian rugs, so unattuned to their debate on dowager's cottages, so anxious to join in their breezy conversation about Oxford dons, and so unable to discuss the roses--it was her endless application of bright red lipstick (which she kept stored in her gardening apron) that enraptured me most and made a poignant, unforgettable, and indelible impression. One should never disregard the glamour."

The part of the book I rely on every year is the section that reads from month to month of what is going on in the garden and what you should be doing in the garden at that time. I find myself reading the current month as well as the future month so I know what I can look forward to, as well as being reassured that it will happen. 

The gardening information is thorough and excellent and written from personal experience, and since it's written by someone with fashion and design experience, it doesn't read like just about every other garden book you pick up. And she's funny, too. :-)

Woo hoo!!! I have proof that spring is going to happen once again!