Sunny with a chance of frost

I should be used to March in the high desert by now. But no. Even after 35 years of gardening here, where the weather, year-round, could be most succinctly described as 'sunny with a chance of frost', I still seem to expect March to be all warm and springlike, with cavorting bunnies and chirpling birdies and soft, gentle rain falling on tender green shoots.

Wrong. Make that cavorting skiers, shivering birdies and intermittent snowflakes drifting down on last year's dead leaves. And gardeners darting outdoors between cold fronts to peer hopefully at the first brave crocus -- the small yellow ones always bloom first -- and then heading back indoors with a sigh of relief, to settle once more in front of the fire with a cup of tea and a lapful of garden catalogs. Merely for insulation, those catalogs. Of course I have all my seeds ordered, long since. Ahem.

For now, if I want spring I step into my small greenhouse and sniff that magical, early spring smell of blooming things. I've only had a greenhouse for 7 years now, and I still get a thrill when I walk into it. It's nature's promise during the cold, dark days of winter, that green will come again and all the containers will come back out onto the deck for their months of glory, come May or June.