The greenhouse is a short, brisk walk from the house, a little too far to run electricity, but just enough of a walk to make the old heart pump. Usually, I drive.

One of the apiaries is on the way to the greenhouse, so, today, wanting to check a young hive’s food supply, I walked, and was glad I did because the wild violets and trout lilies are in full bloom along the woodland section of the lane. High purple and startling yellow. They are happy in the shade and the lilies are partly closed today because of the cold and lack of sun, but it was all good and the dog ran beside me.

The lane itself is in decent shape after a light winter and I can see the shad trees blooming near the edge of the pond. The blooming of shad trees means my intrepid friend Eddie Smith -- with a laugh that could peel an onion -- if he had survived the Agent Orange poisoning he suffered at the hands of our government while serving on the Mekong, Eddie would be off to the Delaware River, or the Hudson, to fish the shad run. But no, he succumbed to the cancers years ago. And, so it goes, as the famous writer once wrote.

With no electricity in the greenhouse and no heat, our early spring options are limited, but we have put in radish and carrots which can stand the cold nights. And we have a row of beans up and flourishing and we cover them on cold nights with an extra layer of plastic inside the thirty by ninety-six foot long high-tunnel. I love growing green beans. The days have enough light in them now to make them grow and greenhouse has plenty of heat during the day to keep them progressing. With a frost warning tonight and the next couple of nights, I’ll slip the extra plastic strip right over the plants. They need to make it through those critical moon-lit hours just before dawn when lovers separate and molecules split.

Even more risky, we have a row of cucumbers transplanted under another row-cover of plastic and they are doing well so far but have drawn in small bugs we are working on to control. A little Joy soap and vinegar in water.

I set a section of scaffolding right inside the big swinging tractor doors and we covered that with a big sheet of translucent plastic too, and here we have planks and fold-up tables carrying trays of tomatoes, peppers, dill, zucchini and lavender. The lavender needed significantly more heat than we could provide, I think, and has not sprouted. These starter plants will be planted both in the field and the greenhouse when the time comes.

It’s all fun and the patch of carrots I planted last fall has given me my daily carrots all winter and is producing fine. I have two in the sink to wash.

On a cloudy day, spirits will rise in the greenhouse and with a step through the door, thirty degrees turns into seventy, and it’s nice to hang out in the envelope of heat with the specks of hopeful green.

We set up the irrigation, what we have of irrigation, with a plain sump pump in the big pond near the house and a one-inch black water line running under the lane and out to the greenhouse. With this, we fill our 55-gallon barrels and warm the water to hand-irrigate whatever we have growing and it doesn’t count as work at all.

A greenhouse in spring is proof that heaven is right now.