It's garden-planting time. If you're an aspiring gardener, here's a must-read guide on Slate "for people with no gardening experience, very little experience, or discouraging-even completely traumatic-experience." It's a month-by month series by Constance Casey, who was a New York City Department of Parks gardener for five years. With humor and heart, she tells you the bare-bones basics, including what to buy at the garden store, how to prepare the bed, and how not to overthink it.

If you're an experienced gardener, you may be enjoying the fruits of those labor-intensive tulip bulbs you planted last fall, which are just beginning to bear their rich, velvety petals. Do yourself a favor and have a glance at another essay by Casey on Slate, Tulip Heartbreak, a spirited rumination on the often grueling labor of love that is tulip-planting.

Photo credit: Slate.com, via Brent and Becky's Bulbs