My goodness, what a wild week! It’s been windy and cold and rainy and windy again. I’m watching snow flurries fly outside my window, and the wind has ensured I’ve found every tiny draft in my apartment.

My paperwhites have all but finished blooming, and my amaryllis will bloom in another week or two. Naturally, I’m starting to get the “green itch.” All these seed catalogs showing up in the mail aren’t helping matters.  

Last season was probably the worst I’ve ever had, but enough time has passed that my gardening optimism is at its peak again.

We’re gardeners after all; it’s what we do. With each new season, we’re ready to blindly forge ahead into the soil, forgetting all the headaches from last year, doing it all over again.  

We’ll battle the pests, brave the elements and get frustrated over things not growing right.  

I made the decision to till our no-till garden this past fall. We’ll till again in the spring when things start warming up. I got tired of fighting with the same pests that keep wintering over in the soil, so I decided to evict them.

I was disappointed. After all, we worked very hard on improving the soil. But isn’t that the great thing about gardening? It’s so adaptable. There are always new things to try, new methods or tips to implement. 

Every season we get a do-over.

Ha, well, as perfect as we can get it with Mother Nature running the show.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 30+ years of gardening, it’s certainly not how to grow the biggest pumpkin, or the most flavorful tomatoes, or how to get rid of aphids permanently; it’s perseverance.

When it comes to not giving up, you’d be hard-pressed to find a tougher bunch than gardeners.