Spring officially arrived yesterday, but here in the western valleys of southern Oregon, it has been coming on strong for several weeks. The crocuses made their first appearance over a month ago, and interspersed between chilly, wet days and frosty nights shine gloriously sunny, 65-degree days with soft breezes. As I stroll about town I see daffodils everywhere, along with the soft green blur of buds on branches. Even some of the ornamental trees are starting to unfurl their blossoms, and each weekend the sound of lawnmowers buzzes through the air. Even as I revel in this reawakening, I find myself this spring feeling a bit like an outsider watching it all. For the first time in over 25 years, I don’t have a plot of ground for which I am personally responsible and feel a stake in what sprouts from it. Note that I didn’t say a plot I “own,” for my relationships with my gardens have never been about owning them but more about caring for and tending them. Just as with children, at some point one realizes that while they belong to you and you to them, they stand apart and independent from you. You nourish, protect, prune and train, but ultimately their life force comes from some greater, grander source and will hopefully carry forth long after you’ve moved on. Last fall I wrote of putting my garden at our former home in East Wenatchee to bed for the last time. While I am grateful that our house sold in the final days of December and we are now searching for a new home, I find myself thinking of those beds and borders often. Spring arrives a month or so later there than it does here, so I calculate when the first crocuses by the front walkway should be making their appearance, when the forsythia buds will begin to swell, how soon the clematis vines will start to stretch out.  For me spring is not just a general lengthening of days or warming of the air; it is tied to specific plants I have set in the ground, watered and fertilized, staked and clipped and tucked up the previous fall. And so I feel a bit adrift this season. I DO appreciate and welcome all the new life springing forth all around me, but I also feel that tug of longing for a place where I can relish in every minute yet promising change of each shrub and sprout reaching for the sun. When I do again have my bit of paradise, this spring will make me appreciate even more all the ones to come in my new garden. Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader