The Bruce Company Blog

The sense of smell is amazingly underrated. An aroma can bring pleasure or alert you to danger. You can sniff out the truth. My absolute favorite is that scent created by a summer rainstorm drenching the pavement and soil on a warm day. There’s even a word for it – petrichor.

When the weather finally breaks, and plants begin to emerge from dormancy, it’s understandable that we are eager to greet every new shoot and admire every swelling bud. But, we can also be quick to pass judgment on the viability of our plants. Sometimes, too quick.

The roller coaster temperatures have had gardeners vacillating between the urge to get tomatoes in the ground and the scramble to dig up floating row covers from the back of the garage.

It seems miraculous that we didn’t wake up on Sunday morning to find all of those tender shoots and blossoms completely frozen. The experience proved to me that some of the most delicate looking plants in the garden can be the most tenacious. These are our precious spring ephemerals.

No matter how long the winter actually is, it always takes forever to end and now that it seems spring has finally sprung, gardeners will be making their lists and checking them twice. Since the outdoor chores that must be done conflict with more pleasurable activities, it may be hard to know where to start.

It is a huge morale booster when our lawns magically green up overnight. And once this happens, there are a few things we can do. First, assess your lawn. Start by looking for bare patches and then make a plan to deal with them.

The weather can be fickle this time of year, but I can stand it knowing that the merry month of May is not far away. And I often measure the march of spring by the sequence of flowering shrubs.

There are good reasons to grow vegetables from seed. There are so many more choices when you’re buying seeds. For instance, the Garden Center stocks 50 varieties of tomato seedlings. If you look at seeds though, you can choose from 134 cherries, currants, slicers and pastes.

Are you thinking that your yard doesn’t have room for another plant? Something about the promise of Spring makes us think that we can, and will, find room to plant absolutely everything. After all, there are worse things to collect than new plants. And gardens have always provided very fertile ground for dreaming.

Imagine an old-fashioned garden. Maybe you can feel the warm spring breezes on your face. As you settle into the fantasy, is there a fragrance that comes to mind? I’d bet that you’re breathing in the memory of a lilac in full bloom.