Our official retirement date was the end of June. Because we took a bit of accumulated vacation time at the end of our employment, our last Sunday in the pulpit was in the middle of June. After we retired, it took us quite a while to sort out our possessions and prepare our home to go on the market. We finally completed the sale of our home and made the last trip with our belongings in October. Our second-to-last trip found us snowbound in Montana on the return when an early blizzard dumped loads of snow. That snow melted and the roads were clear as we headed West for the final trip, but we were delayed by heavy snow for a few hours going over the last mountain pass atop the Cascade mountains. We moved into a rental home and didn’t give much thought to gardening for the next year. Other than mowing the lawn and pruning the rose bushes, we didn’t garden much at all in the time we lived in the rental. Another year passed and once again we were moving in October - this time into a home that we have purchased.

As a result of our early summer retirement and autumnal moves, I didn’t invest much energy in spring fever for several years in a row. Last year, I began to get eager about gardening once again, but with our very small yard, we didn’t make many plans. By late spring, I had put a couple of planters on our deck to grow flowers and we had put in a few tomatoes, some peas, a bit of kale and some herbs in another bed on the south side of our home.

We have been in this home for a full year now, and I am ready to be a bit more intentional about gardening again. I’ve got some ideas about how we might expand our flower beds, add some new bedding plants, and grow a few more vegetables. We’re never going to have a big garden at this house. We don’t have enough real estate. Furthermore, we have access to the farm where there can be lots of very large plots. However, I want to grow a few flowers and at least some salad vegetables and herbs in our own yard.

That means that spring fever is setting in very, very early this year. Last week, I built some new raised planter boxes for our dahlias and some bedding plants. I hauled in about 5” of topsoil for the new beds. Today on my “to do” list is hauling fresh compost from the farm compost system to layer with that top soil before adding a layer of planting soil on the top. I plan to use 5 gallon buckets to haul the compost soil. 6 to 10 buckets should do the job.

As I woke to write my journal this morning, however, I thought to myself, “You’ve got a bad case of spring fever!” You think you have to get those new beds finished, but there is no deadline today. It is still January!” It is the truth. The climate is a bit milder here. Depending on the year, mid to late May was the earliest you could plan on frost-free days in South Dakota. Here you can probably get by around the middle of April most years. Thats three months away. There is plenty of time to prepare our new flower beds for planting. I don’t need to have hauling compost as a high priority for today. I could relax and do other chores instead.

It isn’t the first time that I have let spring fever get the best of me. Four decades ago our son was born in the middle of March. We were living in North Dakota. The joy of becoming a new father combined with some mild March weather in North Dakota to set me off. I set out two sets of tomatoes that were frozen before I got our tomatoes going that spring. Not only did I freeze all of the seed sets we were raising inside the house, I froze a half dozen tomato plants that I bought from a nursery. Spring can be fickle. It was that year.

In my own defense, this is a very different place from any other place where we have lived. There is no frost in the ground right now. When we did have frost, it was only 2 or 3 inches deep. I don’t think we’ve had more than 2 or 3 weeks of cold weather all winter so far. There is plenty of rain and the grass is turning green. Some of my neighbors have even mowed their lawns, though I won’t need to do so in January. Even if the grass gets a little long, I have to have some standards. I’m waiting at least until February.

Then again, those dahlia beds will be ready to plant by the end of the month. Out of respect for the weather, forged by decades of poor gardening decisions, and out of my own capacity to recognize the symptoms of spring fever, I have resolved that I will not plant any dahlia tubers until after our son has put some of his into the ground. I won’t need to purchase any tubers this year. We harvested plenty last fall. They are all neatly layered in dry peat moss in the garage waiting until time to plant. It would be easy to jump the gun. I’m not going to do it. They are staying in the garage until our son declares it is time. And he is a very, very busy guy with four children, a farm with animals, and a busy administrative job that comes with a 45-minute commute when the traffic is light. He won’t be rushing into gardening this spring. He’ll be too tired. Then again, they have baby who turns one in early February and you never know what being around a young one can do to lift your spirits.

So, I will take a deep breath and relax. There are no gardening deadlines today. I’ll just see how things go. Still, I think I’ll take the pickup when I run errands this morning - just in case I decide to stop by the farm and shovel a bit of compost into buckets on my way home.