Spring Fever

I recently returned from a Mexican vacation. After sunning on the beach and sniffing lush jungle flowers ‘round every corner, returning to Minnesota was a blow. Stripped black-eyed Susan spines poke their knobby dried heads through the two-foot snowdrifts surrounding my yard. I want to sit in the almost-warm grass and clip them down to prepare for August blooms. I want spring.

What a great time to start a gardening blog.


A February treat: Tropical flowers in Mexico.
A little introduction: I love gardening and I love writing. When I was ten years old, I wrote a cute poem lavishly describing the New Mexican sunset spreading thick citrus sherbet over my family’s campsite, and I’ve considered myself a writer ever since. After college I was so obsessed with landing a fulltime writing job that once I did, I spent the next ten years of my life ignoring my own writing. I forgot I even had my own writing.

This blog is to help jog my memory. It’s also to chronicle my experiences with vegetable and flower gardening in the Twin Cities. No doubt it will also include a bushel of other things about gardening like cooking, eating, canning, composting, and the like. We’ll see where it goes. I’m an organic hobby gardener and – here comes the first disclaimer of this blog – I am not an expert. I learned all that I know about the joys from my dear mom, reading, experimentation, and chit-chatting with my fellow earth diggers.

Last summer, near the end of gardening season, I bought my first house. I tended what beautiful plants existed (and there were many), and planted nothing. This will be my first year of gardening in my new home, which means I have plans and expectations, but naturally, no idea how things will turn out.

So, let the garden blogging journey begin! The red tails of the ceremoniously cut ribbon are slapping the wind. The wine is slip-sticking down the sides of the massive ship’s bow. Gardening Plots is formally set a-sail.

Many thanks for joining me, dear reader. I look forward to comments, questions and shared experiences. Of course, any and all errors are my very own. I regret them, but only a little.