Yesterday I hung clothes on the line, first outdoor laundry of the season, and T brought up the outdoor table and chairs from the cellar, and I set them up alongside the garden boxes, and the weather was windy and raw but the crocuses were blooming and we felt like spring.

Here are the little arugula speckles inside my cold frame, mixed in with the ubiquitous Norway maple samaras that will shortly be driving me crazy by sprouting everywhere. I never saw such an eager tree.

Here is an early-season shot of the Lane (if you are new to my little yard, all of its regions have names, courtesy of my younger son): cold frame in back, moveable row protector in front, arugula and spinach to come. You see how close our property is to the neighbor's. Everything I do outside, I do under a fish-eye lens. It's still very odd, after twenty-plus years in the woods, to be so public. But I'm getting used to it.

A shot of the Terrace and the Breadbasket: the contrast is poor because of the clouds, but on the far right maybe you can glimpse the pea trellis, cucumber trellis beside it, garden box with row cover, wintered-over spinach. Again, my cultivation space is smack up against my neighbor's property; you can also see how tightly it presses against the front sidewalk. It's a good thing all of my neighbors are so extremely nice.

Focus on spinach: I can't tell you how pleased I am it lasted through the winter, even through that subzero snap, without any protective cover (other than snow).

First wood hyacinth, tucked up against the stones in the Library Garden: frost-burnt leaves but bravely blooming nonetheless.

Another shot of the Breadbasket, and my very plain-faced house. Here you can see, from the left, the bean tower and the tomato stakes.

Everything in these photos looks like a stereotype of grim New England. We have to hunt hard for our beauties in March. In two months this space will be filled with vines and flowers, and the house will be less bleak. But it sure does look like a Frost poem now.