Promises, promises...

All kinds of promises.

Spring has marched in more or less, even if we are technically supposed to wait until the 20th to declare so. The last typical freeze date around here is March 15th, folks are already sporting sunburns around town even as they remark upon our wonderfully brief snowstorm recently, and if I had no idea from my own experience, a quick glance at garden blogs would reveal it is time to get ready for SpuhRINNNNG!

Spring gets a lot of virtual ink in terms of hope and promises.  And to me, the idea of Spring does carry with it big buckets of promise.

There are bulbs that finally (finally!) have sprouted and/or bloomed, assuring me my efforts to get them buried at the correct depth, root side down, were not in vain.

There are bluebonnets showing in numbers adequate to assure reseeding in an area I've been working on for oh, about five years now.  In my mind's eye this corner has always been filled with bluebonnets.  Reality dictated otherwise.  Until this year that is, when some wonderful conspiracy of germination, temperature and moisture seems to have finally turned the ignition on for my Bonnet Patch.

Despite the loquat trees insisting upon blooming and trying to set fruit during a winter of abrupt dips below freezing, there is evidence there will yet be loquats in a few weeks.

The cilantro plants are beginning to look like they might not only survive, but thrive with a bit of warmth and continuing moisture.

I have tomato seeds ready to start indoors, with my determination that THIS will be the year I get another bumper crop. It has to happen sometime, the lesson of my Bluebonnet Patch (don't give up!) is not lost in the shift from flower to fruit.

Spring also promises a shift in our horizon view soon.  These lovely oak trees that are all over our property, indeed all over Central Texas, have survived wilt threats so far, have survived that long hot hell of a summer, and now are readying themselves to shed their leaves and get busy making baby oaks.  A process I would not begrudge them if it were possible for them to do so and for me to simultaneously be allowed to breathe while outdoors.

Sad to say, it is a respiratory showdown, and I come out waving (and sneezing into) a white handkerchief year after year.

Spring and it's promises, promises, all kinds of promises.  Some, like the bluebonnets, bearing the satisfaction of long sought after goals, some, like the tomatoes, bringing guarantees of flummoxing yet to come, and others, like the oak pollen, simply needing to be survived.

And what will summer bring?  Who knows...summer is still far enough away that any potential bullying of the death star seems a faint threat, especially in the cool of a sunny Spring morning.

So off I go to enjoy precisely that, a cool sunny morning out of doors, before the oak trees try to kill me with their slutty awful pollen making.  For now I can garden AND breathe, a victory I'll take while it lasts.