All right, I’ll admit it. Now that all the library brouhaha is over, I’ve been bitten hard by the gardening bug, and once bitten the fever spreads fast. Modest budget be damned, what I want to do is head to the local garden centers and spend, spend, spend.

I won’t, of course. I am mindful of our modest budget. However, this weekend when I go get herbs and some tomato plants, I might slide in a few six packs of, say, begonias, coleuses, or dwarf snapdragons, all plants that do well in my shady yard. I’ll try not to look at at the garden ornaments, another one of my weaknesses, but I sure could use another cobalt blue ball to go with the bird bath out back.

Yesterday, I potted coleuses and impatiens. Today I’ll plant the dwarf snapdragons in the long bed by the patio. The cats and the dog will be nearby to give me encouragement.

Right now, in central Maine and at the little house in the big woods, the gardens are in a prebloom state and are mostly green. But the green is a vibrant green, and the slugs and snails have yet to do their worst on the hostas. Everything looks, well, so green and healthy. While I’m crazy about flowers, I’m also very fond of all the green. So fond, in fact, that I don’t think I would be happy in an arid climate where the colors are more muted.

For the next week or so, I’ll be working diligently outside. Along with potting flowers—a task I just love—there is compost to spread, beds to be fertilized, and plants to be thinned.

As Katherine White once wrote, onward and upward in the garden.