Gentlemen (and women), start your engines. It's spring, time to get back to work, and I, for one, couldn't be happier.

Yes, I know it's still too early to remove mulch or do any planting, but the crocus are popping up, and every time I saunter out to see if they're a half inch taller than they were the last time I checked, I rummage around in the decomposing leaves to see what might be sending forth a shoot.

Chives and tarragon are always the first perennials to sprout in my garden, and the sight of their little green faces always sends me back inside with a proverbial song in my heart. Why? Certainly not from any overwhelming love of the herbs. (I keep intending to use those chive flowers in my salads but then forget until they're old and so intensely onion-y I don't even like them, and I'm not all that fond of tarragon either.) No, what cheers me is the return of life and the way just one little sprout can make me feel that I'm connected to the rhythms of the universe. (You get so much from so little when you're a gardener.)

March is the month when I start most of my seeds, an activity that provides thrills of its own. The first time I planted some marigolds and they actually came up, I felt as if I'd just won the Nobel Prize with maybe a MacArthur genius grant tossed in. And when I find myself harvesting a five-foot tall tomato plant in August and consider the size of the seed that produced all this bounty well, it's downright sobering.

Then comes April. Dividing old perennials. Buying new ones. Finding a place to put them since (as always) I buy what I want, not what I have room for. Taking time to smell the...hyacinths...and to appreciate the tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs whose stay with us is all too brief. If the winter has been mild, Clematis x jackmanii and the roses will already be breaking dormancy, and what a mind-boggling notion that is. The world is coming alive, and we get to watch.

You get so much from so little when you're a gardener.