It came in the mail today, my carefully selected order of Johnny’s seeds. The calendar says we are a couple- three weeks into Spring, with the box in my hands I walk to the window and look out. The color palette is shades of gray and the naked branches of the swamp maples look stark against the milky sky. I take in my garden paved with yards of black cloth. The bean poles appear as sentries guarding the skeletons of last season’s tomatoes still trapped in their cages. The old iron bedstead that lives life now as my cucumber trellis lies flat, thrown up out of the ground by the winter’s heave. What was last summer’s chard has collapsed into a row of rotting brown leaves and there are dimples of water with ice crusted edges. I watch a fat robin perching on the fence while another works an exposed patch of garden and then, I notice them. I walk outside, crouch down and cock my head to the side and they’re there. Like us tugging at the neck of a wool sweater, the garlic spears through it’s blanket of straw and sheds the winter. In a few months there will be gracefully curled scapes offering themselves for everything from flower arranging to pesto. So it truly is Spring and yes, garlic is sweet.

Diana Santospago is the chef and innkeeper of The Inn at Isle au Haut.