Garden

SPRING HAS ARRIVED in Maryland, in fits and starts and a bit half-heartedly. But according to the calendar, it is spring. I am back in the garden, determinedly so, after a winter of mild days that held the promise of a little yard work but then snatched it away, laughing a cold, blistering laugh. I was not the only living thing tormented by this uneven winter. The tulips and daylilies were fooled into emerging and their tips were burned by a sudden cold blast. I think the hydrangea buds met the same fate.

SOUTH PARIS, Maine -Wearing nothing but smiles, jewelry, shoes and bug spray, 15 of western Maine's leading citizens have posed as pinups for a 2003 calendar they hope will pay off a $150,000 mortgage and preserve a famous garden here for future generations. During 7 a.m. early spring photo shoots in the garden, they braved 40-degree temperatures, attacks by black flies and the judgment of their friends and families. And they worried that if their calendar failed, Bernard McLaughlin's jewel of a garden would become a parking lot. They covered their nudity with shovels, wheelbarrows, hoses, a shopping list (for the garden's gift shop)

Marjorie J. Crook, an avid gardener who was nominated to the Towson Gardens Hall of Fame in April, died Tuesday of cancer at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, where she had been a longtime volunteer. She was 77."She had the energy level of 20 people," said a son, Stuart T. Crook, of Phoenix. "She never stopped."Mrs. Crook, who lived in Cockeysville for 40 years, was involved in several garden organizations, including the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, the Lutherville Garden Club, and the Maryland Home and Garden Show since 1957.

IT'S TAKEN me many years to realize the benefits of the domestic arts education I received while growing up in the old Guilford Avenue house. I can't recall any real loafers in that household of 12; each month brought its own chores and duties. One of my home-school classes involved the garden, a tiny rowhouse back yard that, for all the shade of a nearby apartment house, supplied a delightful crop of flowers, over and above the roses that seemed to dominate the show. As a child, I was fascinated by all the bulbs and fertilizers, plus walks throughout Charles Village to inspect our neighbors' little homesteads.

Every living thing in my yard is crispy. There has not been a long, slow, soaking rain in weeks, and when I inspect my shriveling gardens, the grass crunches beneath my feet like corn flakes. I am doing the only thing a gardener can do in a drought. I am watering. Endlessly watering. Of course, I resent it. All gardeners do. We like the creative part of gardening, like planning and planting. We don't even mind the maintaining part of gardening, like trimming and pruning and dead-heading.

It was getting to be time to say goodbye to the garden, a parting that I have always found difficult. I have a tendency to cling to the belief that the tomato plants aren't dead yet, that the peppers will rebound and that the basil will bounce back from its frosty dance with death. As the temperatures drop, so do my standards. Tomatoes and bell peppers that would have been heaved into the compost pile in August are given special treatment in October, carried into the dark basement and gingerly placed on a bed of newspapers to ripen.

IN AUGUST, the garden riots. The lemon balm that was prim and pint-size in April becomes as broad and bushy as a Ravens lineman. The mint, which seemed to be submissive in May, spreads faster than Quiznos on a four-lane highway. The watermelon and its viny kin push beyond the proper boundaries, testing the neighborliness of anything they entwine. The sunflowers are so tall and tough you don't dare try to correct their posture. Then there are the tomatoes, once a prized crop, now a surplus commodity, something like government cheese.

Gardeners get a fresh start every year. Glossy catalogs full of new plants, ideas and inspiration fill the mailbox in January, and before you know it, you're making lists, plans and decisions. The New Year is upon us, but it's really never too late to make New Year's resolutions, and gardening resolutions are the kind you won't regret. A gardener's resolutions don't have to involve giving anything up. When you resolve to make your garden more beautiful, the changes don't have to be expensive or difficult or involve plants with names you can't pronounce.

There are plants in my garden I have come to think of as the Lucrezia Borgias of the flower world.Beautiful. Alluring. Sweet scents beckoning. These are favorite plants whose flowers I yearly look forward to. Alas, I must regard them with care. They are poisonous.Does this surprise you? What kind of person would grow poisonous plants? The answer may surprise you.Most gardens are planned and thought of as places of graciousness and refuge, visual feasts and enticing scents, not to mention delicious flavors.

This summer, I'm doing garden restoration, and, frankly, I don't like it. The problem is: I've been doing the heavy-lifting part for years without ever getting to the creative refining, like a journey whose destination is always just out of reach. I want thriving vegetables, but I also want well-ordered beauty -- a border of electric blue lobelia in the half-moon flowerbed at the south entry, toad lily (Tricyrtis) by the bench, and something tall, fragrant and apricot-colored added to the fall blues and lavenders of the flower-and-herb bed. But I'm still stuck on the prep.