nothing

I am planting things again in the hopes that the sun hasn't forgotten us completely. I have been biding my time, waiting for that Gardener's Mecca: the Canby Master Gardner Fair in the first week of May. I had been biding my time, that is, until the sun made a fair showing on Saturday and I went to Freddy's for just a very, very few plants. Just a few dozen. My husband, attempting to be caustic and unfair, laughed as I, in his words, replaced all the things that didn't make it from last year. I tried to explain that annuals don't make it, aren't expected to make it. Just color for the springtime. So there.

I planted tons of lobelia and verbena, columbine (which will be back next year just you wait and see) and a bunch of succulents along the side of the deck, mother hen and her chicks, stuff like that. Spineless cactus. Leave no dirt un-planted, I say.

It has been a long, wordless winter in my world. I seem to be running out. I keep saying they will come back to me like I am Capistrano, and some evenings and some early mornings I hear them clattering at the windows, asking to be let in out of the rain, but I won't do it. I won't.

Not yet.