After the winds and snowfalls of March, how can April be most cruel?

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

T.S. Eliot's lyrical, poignant poetry in “The Waste Land” calls out the fourth month as the most unkind, with its echoes of memory and desire, its fragile promise of hope. For many impetuous gardeners like me, the cold, raw winds of March have sent us into less than poetic despair. We were poised to rush the season, ready to plant the peas and lettuce seeds, at least. Fleece jackets, flannel-lined jeans, thermal gloves, a red wool hat: we would have layered them on and stepped out into the chill. We might even have laughed at the wind, because we were outside again, sifting the dirt through our fingers, marking the rows, and feeling the first, quick flutter of gardening joy.

After waiting through a month of rain, and even a thunderstorm and a wet snowfall this week,I was finally – finally – zipping up my trusty gardening jacket when I stopped, with one sleeve still dangling. The first hint was my fingers, already turning red and stiff as I struggled with the jacket's zipper. Then I thought about the less subtle clues: Cold winds, rain-soaked ground, late winter snow. The Garden Goddess could not have been more clear if she had dropped a flashing red stoplight on my head.

I get it. It's not quite time yet. In this quixotic weather, the peas might drown, and the lettuce seeds could freeze. Even if I feel reckless with impatience, I have to consider the tiny, green plant lives I am honor-bound to protect. Those little seeds might be tough, but they are a weak match for a furious goddess when she's changing seasons. She is between acts, upstairs in her dressing room switching costumes, from winter's white velvet to spring's green-leafed muslin. My favorite mythical diva is not amused when she's caught in dishabille, with dripping hair and wearing a threadbare gray bathrobe.

So I have rehung my jacket on its hook near the garden door (at our house, every outside door leads to a garden,) and resigned myself to waiting awhile longer. In the meantime, I'm taking one last look through the seed and plant catalogs. I started with nearly fifty, which started dropping through our mail slot in December and are still trickling in. In February I did a serious editing of the catalog mountain and bought as many seed packets from local nurseries as possible. But there are always a few must-haves that I can't find here, so I ordered from garden companies with whom I've done business for years – including selectseeds.com for antique seeds, gurneys.com, territorial seed.com, and whiteflowerfarm.com. If March remains most cruel next week, and I have to wait to get out in the dirt, the more tempting the catalogs' color shots of vegetables and flowers become. I even start believing mine would look exactly like the pictures.

BadKitten for President update: Benjamin BadKitten, my imaginative (some, and I am one of them, might say delusional) Maine coon cat seems to be botching his campaign. Instead of crafting policy statements and catchy sound-bites, he's out after dark, catching field mice. (He lost my vote when he brought in a dead baby mouse, but gained my husband's support for eliminating one more small rodent from our neighborhood.) Instead of polishing his image as a mature, thoughtful leader, Benjamin is spending too much time at the food bowl, polishing off the last of the day's tuna. And his credibility as our future commander in chief took a major hit this week, during the rolling thunderstorm that seemed to hover over our house. Wannabe-President BadKitten opted to lead from under the footstool, where he huddled, whimpering, until the terrifying thunder finally faded. Then he slunk out on his belly from his retreat (he swore the Secret Service stuffed him under the footstool to protect him,) and mewed pitifully. I carried him with me to my reading chair, where he buried his head in my lap and trembled. Let us hope he would not repeat this unfortunate display of chicken-heartedness during a crisis in the Situation Room.