Spring is teasing us in Utah. One day it will be 60 degrees and the next it snows. The sunny days are all during the work week and the storms seem to fall on the weekends. It's painful for a gardener who also works full time. In fact, not able to stand it a moment longer, I spent a few hours this afternoon puttering in my garden. It took until late Sunday afternoon for the temperatures to climb back to 50 degrees.

I was suduced, as I so often am. I noticed ten or so bright yellow crocuses near the driveway, fighting their way through a mat of dead alyssum. I stooped to clear the alyssum away, got tangled in a pansy and noticed a sprig of lamb's ear that sowed itself in an entirely inappropriate place. So I cut back the pansy, pulled out the lambs ear along with dead the alyssum and stooped closer trying to remember what the small-leafed perennial was I planted beneath the America rose. A pile of dead foliage was forming on the driveway, so of course I had to go find my yard cart--back behind the compost pile. I piled the leaves and tangles of dead perennials in the cart. But wait--a little more raking back of dead leaves and the yellow-gold striped blades of "Harkonen" grass can catch the light.

Then suddenly, two hours had gone by and I had pruned back two of my eight climbing roses and cleaned up two of the entry way beds by my front gate. My back hurts a little and when I think of the rest of the garden that needs attention I feel overwhelmed--yet somehow strangely peaceful with the smell of dirt in my nostrils. Spring is here in all her fickleness.

The weatherman says four storms in the next fourteen days, and if it holds true to the recent pattern, they'll fall on the weekends. So I'll keep on, squeezing some puttering time in the cracks of sunshine.