The fruit trees are starting to bloom in Las Vegas and the local gardening column is telling us it's time to plant the early season crops like spinach, lettuces, cabbages, and root vegetables. They do best when the daily high is below 80 degrees, and our last frost date is around the end of February, so pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers can be set outside or seeds planted in the ground around March 8.

Once it gets hot in May (90 degrees by then) the cool season crops like lettuce will bolt and become bitter. We can grow just about anything here (with daily drip irrigation and lots of mulch), but the weather is always a factor like anywhere else.

Another problem here in the desert is that all the natural soil is basically sterile, so we have to dig out the old dirt and replace it with healthy dirt or work in a lot of amendments, and then apply fertilizer religiously.

This is the cyclamen in our front yard this morning. It blooms every winter and dies back completely in the summer.