It still looks like winter out my kitchen window but I’m totally admiring pastel colors and cute little bunnies on everything I seem to look at the past week.

Is this just because I’m tired of the gray winter scene outside, or is it because we are in Lent?

I’m researching plants for the garden, shuffling my seed packages and asking friend gardeners if they have started seeds indoors.

With another birthday being marked off, I find myself thinking of my garden bucket list.

The bucket list changes often. Usually because I can’t remember what was on it to begin with.

It’s no surprise that visiting gardens is on my list. Some are trips taking me to other parts of the country, while within 30 miles there are gardens I am itching to get into. The summer of 2024 just might be the time to do that.

The list includes visiting the yard of a young gardener who has used country farm artifacts placed among her yard, so I’ve been told. She and her husband also spread square baled bean stubble as the mulch in the plantings and paths in the yard.

Then there is the garden of the lady who has done away with most of the lawn at her rural yard and has many perennials planted and annuals. She also has a large vegetable garden which she harvests from and preserves vegetables in abundance.

There are also repeat gardens I want to visit. They include a local garden, going into its second year, that has been laid out ever so efficiently for watering and for weed control. It, too, is visually pleasing. Also, a garden where purple coneflowers flood the backyard and the hostess offers a cup of coffee or glass of wine and enjoyable conversation to all who stop by.

Yes, gardeners have bucket lists.

One of my bucket-list garden visits was Mackinac Island. I had seen so many videos from an internet garden site of the landscapes of homeowners’ yards. What I didn’t take into consideration was that a bus load of people did not get into those yards. What we did see was beautiful with tons of blooming hydrangeas.

Mackinaw Island - check off.

I had talked myself out of changing anything in my backyard flower bed, but looking at a garden supply site, I came up with an idea of changing a bed in the flower garden.

Well, another addition to the bucket list. I’ll keep you posted if that gets checked off the list.

If you’re a gardener it doesn’t seem like the list ever ends. There is always a plant you want to to try, a garden you want to see or a new tool to try.

My first order of seeds arrived and I’m anxious to plant a few. Yes, I do have a case of spring fever. Not only is it the pastel colors and bunny images that have me itching to dig in the warm spring soil, which of course hasn’t warmed yet, I think it’s just that time of year.

After all, Phil the groundhog predicted an early spring and we don’t want to go against a groundhog.

Warmer garden days are coming. Another sign of that was this past week I found some tiny bicolored violas blooming in the garden and spring flowering bulbs are starting to emerge from the soil. Spring can’t be far off despite that it is still February.

Until I can play in the garden, I’ll just keep adding to my garden bucket list which, of course, is written on pastel paper as I doodle a bunny on the side of the notepad.

Oh by the way, the notepad has a quote inscribed on the top, “Garden like you’ll never grow old.” That makes sense to a gardener who has a never-ending bucket list.