This week's column may seem a little frantic, but May is a frantic month for any gardener. Such intensity and anticipation. The garden tents are up, nurseries and garden centres have thrown open their gates, while the temporary greenhouses set up outside department stores appear to be evolving into permanent structures. Bookstores have all the latest gardening books stacked on display at the door, and Home and Garden TV, which I never seem to have time to watch, has yet another new series. Has everyone gone gardening mad?

Life was a lot simpler when gardening meant raking the lawn, spreading the fertilizer, hanging up a couple of plastic flowering baskets, and maybe sticking a cell pack of petunias into the ground. Summer maintenance was running the sprinkler day and night, cutting the grass, hosing down the driveway, and tossing out the dried up hanging baskets. It was a simpler time. Now it's much more complicated, and frantic, and it all happens this month.

It began for me after I wrote the column on raised beds. "So, what are you waiting for?" I asked myself. With the energy and enthusiasm of a power play when the game is in the waning moments of a tied up series (aren't they finished yet?), I took my shovel from the shed and began digging out the twenty concrete paving slabs that have been half buried against the fence for the last fifteen years, acting as a makeshift retaining wall. You'd swear they'd taken root. I managed three before I broke the shovel handle. Then my back began to ache, and then it rained, and then it rained some more, but once started I couldn't stop. I felt like the last link in a chain reaction.

I re-laid the slabs as a pathway, and then brought in new, smaller ones to build the three raised beds — standing them on their edges with a wooden frame to hold them in place. All this activity going on in a confined area meant I had to relocate a pile of compost — twice, most of the topsoil had to be redistributed, and I needed to bring in fresh gravel for the upper pathway when it began to look like the parking lot at a ploughing match. I can tell you that by the time I'd finished emptying the two monster bags of fresh topsoil and mulch from the driveway and hauling the contents to the backyard, the wheelbarrow had a serious limp and was lurching badly. I tried the soil delivery in bags because a load dumped in the driveway might have washed away before I could move it. The bags are a lot tidier and the soil and mulch are good quality.

Meanwhile, my greenhouse, or bio-box, as I call it, is loaded with plants awaiting release, and last year's summer bulbs stored in the garage will be flowering if I don't get them planted soon, as will the bag of new ones that I brought home from a garden show I attended what seems like months ago.

I have seed packets in my pockets that I should be sowing already, and I haven't even been near a nursery yet. I did take time out to attend a media launch of new garden products by Loblaws at the Toronto Botanical Gardens, where I heard presentations by extremely knowledgeable plant professionals. I watched a slide show, checked out the new plants, and ate the free lunch, even though it wasn't mentioned on the invite and I'd already grabbed a burger, but then my appetite does seem bigger lately. How's your appetite? It must be the weather.