Early February. This year the snowy season has been very bearable for me. I'd go so far as to say it's been nice. It's the kind of winter I remember from childhood; a crisp and cold-fresh, warm mittens and hot chocolate, icicles, sparkly snow sort of winter. The kind of winter Minnesotans embrace, making other people wonder about us.

And just around the corner - seed catalog time! I don't have the spot for a garden (and I'm using the word garden in the most reverent sense - the 'working garden,' all rowed up with edible, preservable foods), nor the time to care for and harvest one, although I sure wish I did. I have to suffice with planting a lot of flowers everywhere, instead.

Mom and Dad always had huge gardens full of potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, tomatoes: red and yellow, leaf lettuce, beans: green and purple, beets, squash: many kinds, rhubarb, strawberries, sunflowers, cucumbers, dill, all indescribably delicious, coming straight from the earth to our mouths, as they did.

We had two big gardens; I remember being excited to help with the planting. Each row was critically spaced, measured the length of a metal post apart. A length of twine pulled taut across the vast width of the garden was the guide for each hoe'd row. Then, pull up the fence posts, move another row-length down, stretch the twine across and hoe another. Dad did the hoeing; we kids dropped in the seeds, covered the rows with the dark soil, and set the seeds but walking once, across the top of each row, with bare feet. When one finished walking over the row, it looked very much (we thought) like tractor tire marks.

There were flowers too, poppies one year; nodding red and pink along the north side. Dad planted gourds and pumpkins for us too, hugely fun for later in the fall.

There was also weeding, (which I only remember with fondness, truly) and of course the picking, shelling, husking, snapping, and various states of harvesting. Storing, freezing and canning. And all the while, eating. Meals in late summer went right from garden to table. Someone was always husking ears of corn on the back deck before dinner.

It never seemed like work, at least as I recall. Although Mom and Dad certainly did the majority of the 'big work' and we had a whole passel of kids in our family to share the weeding and picking duties.

What it did seem was sunshine and summer rain. Warm endless days, blue skies.

It was good growing weather.