Spring Too Soon?

Can spring ever come too soon? I’ve been so busy worrying about it being way too warm for the grapevines under my care that I’ve semi-forgotten to pay attention to the lusciousness of my own garden. There are still several weeks of possible frost ahead, and I know that a bud break in the grapes before frost is ruled out for the year could be disastrous. In my own garden, I’m not as sure.

This is my first year with this garden, and my first time gardening in this climate zone, so almost everything here was planted by someone else, someone who knew what was normal here, and many years ago at that. Now, with a warming climate, all bets are off. These hellebores are happily blooming when they should, in early March, and so I’m not fretting over them.

Perhaps these filbert catkins, so ethereally lovely, can cope. This tree looks to have been planted about when the house was built, in 1955, so who knows how many early and late springs it’s seen. It’s ancient, though, and I feel protective toward it.

But this indomitable tulip is surely confused. Last fall I buried its home in rock, not knowing there were bulbs underneath. And now it, and several more like it, have banged their heads through the stones, getting to the surface and the warmth they’d normally have found next month.

And not only is the forsythia at the height of its golden gorgeousness, so too are the roses leafing out. They say that you should prune roses when the forsythia blooms, which is definitely now, but then, what if it freezes?

I’m not worried about these guys, because I don’t know what they are or what their habits should be. I’m just happy to see their true blue every time I pull into the driveway, where they’ve come out just as the snowdrops have faded.

Nor am I worried about my scruffy, scrappy lawn, which is full of violets. My Plants professor thinks of them as weeds that should be banished from the grass, but I love them. They look like little bright Easter eggs, peeking through the unruly grass. Last night’s high wind brought down a small branch of the weeping birch, but I’m not worried about the tree either. It’s another one that’s probably stood as long as the house has, and knows how to take care of itself.

But in truth it’s hard to know when to worry and when to just admire what the world has to offer. The consequences of a freeze here in my sweet little spot wouldn’t be dire, unlike the vineyard, where crop yields could suffer mightily if the climate doesn’t cooperate. And that’s another lesson that’s not in my official curriculum – life as a farmer is uncertain, fraught with perils and powers that you can’t control. All you can do is keep your eye on the sky and hope for the best, while doing what little you can to help nature along. Wait, am I talking about farming, or life?