Early Spring

Each summer during the flood of incoming tulip catalogs, I think of Tiny Tim.He turned me on to tulips 25 years ago.Remember Tiny Tim, the singer? Stringy black hair and a beak. Played the ukulele. Falsetto voice like a frightened canary. Sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."That tune was such a hit that I went out and bought my first bag of tulip bulbs and stuck them in the front yard. To heck with soil requirements. Tiny Tim's music made tulips fun to grow.Despite my ignorance, the bulbs survived.

I recently helped a young friend move and, God bless her unencumbered little heart, it was easier than unloading groceries. She had everything but her purse and coat packed and ready to load when her friends and I arrived with our vans. The whole business took less time than eating the doughnuts (traditional moving day sustenance) she provided. As a result, there was plenty of time left for me to contemplate my own burdened existence. And I concluded that I have too much stuff in my life.

Things we love about spring: Everything seems fresh and new. Possibilities abound. Buds appear on bare branches, and early spring flowers blossom in soft yellows and pale lavenders. The light is different, almost shimmering with expectancy. Even chilly mornings are quickly warmed by a suddenly radiant sun. What we don't love about spring: It's a time for cleaning out (the house) and cleaning up (the garden). But even the most tedious chores can be made more palatable if you intersperse them with small springtime treats.

Your lawn had a generally wet and warm winter and may look a shade sere about now, but there are steps you can take to help ensure a healthy spring and summer of growth.The trick is to recognize that a lawn goes through up and down phases and doesn't necessarily respond to the same stereotyped, week-in, week-out cutting and watering treatment. The weather really counts.For Maryland, it was the warmest winter on record, as well as one of the wettest, with rapid runoffs but not the long, soaking rains that gardens favor.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Sorry, but the answers scheduled for today's column have been postponed. This is spring training. It's too early for answers. They're all at the beach.But as the Orioles establish themselves as the official flops of early spring, sinking to the bottom of the heap with 0-21 authority, it's not too early to ask a few questions.So, let's go ahead and cut right to the biggie: Do the Orioles really have enough pitching to beat out the Blue Jays and Yankees?It's not clear that they do. And not just because their pitchers are getting hammered down here as consistently as the noonday sun is hot.Even before the first tobacco juice splatter hit the dirt in mid-February, it was clear that the Orioles' pitching would be their biggest obstacle.

Maryland's earthworms are still on duty this winter. Regional extension specialist Jon Traunfeld has spotted them munching merrily through the top six inches of soil, where it ought to be too cold. On the lower Eastern Shore, aphids have emerged early to trouble the winter grain crops. In suburbia, some crocuses are up, and daffodils weeks ago began to poke shoots into the lengthening daylight. This mild and very dry winter - one of the driest on record in Baltimore - has been great for critters, and for people who hate snow and ice and long for an early spring.

Well, at least it's been a nice, quiet offseason for the Orioles. Let's see, all they've done is overhaul the roster, tinker with the notion of pursuing disgraced steroid-cheat Manny Ramirez, trade their most experienced starter in Jeremy Guthrie and nearly touch off an international incident with South Korea's professional baseball league. Other than that, yep, it's been pretty uneventful. The bottom line is this: pitchers and catchers report to spring training Sunday and we still don't know if the Orioles are any better than last year.

The tree frogs are in full chorus, singing summer's end. Gardens are winding down. Leaves are beginning to flutter along the sidewalks. It's fall, which means harvest, cleanup and planting. Planting? Yup. For reasons both human and botanical, fall is the time to plant. On the human side, fall has far fewer time-critical garden chores than spring. It's more leisurely. Also, planting toward the end of the season instead of at the beginning helps curtail the temptation to cram in everything but the kitchen sink.

Gardeners are forever looking for something to wrap a flower bed around. There has to be a bed along the front of the porch, and others might be carved out around a garden shed, a birdbath or the trunks of shade trees. For many people, there's another opportunity right out by the curb: the mailbox. A garden bed around a mailbox gives gardeners a chance to put their horticultural stamp where it's sure to show. In the midst of handsome shrubs, interesting ornamental grasses or hard-working annual and perennial flowers, a standard-issue mailbox on a post becomes a piece of functional art. When there's a flower bed to visit, the trip out to the mailbox is much more interesting, even if the postman brings nothing but bills.

We recently purchased a home that has a large stand of bamboo along the rear property line. Is this an invasive plant, and how can we get rid of it? With few exceptions, bamboos are considered invasive plants in Maryland. They spread more or less rapidly by enlarged underground roots called rhizomes and can be very difficult to manage. If you are not opposed to using chemicals for control, I would recommend killing the stand with a spray that contains the chemical glyphosate. Do not try to spray the full plant canopy.