Planting season takes on a different character every year. This year's rain produced prodigious peony crops. It gave us backyard gardeners not much time to plant right after the frost date in early May. Either rain fell, or the ground was too saturated to plant. The skies cleared for the weekend of May 20. Local nurseries swarmed with customers at early hours, and almost every household in the neighborhood had someone out weeding or planting.

By Monday, May 23, I had to restrain myself from going out into the garden immediately after breakfast. I normally do not do this, but I wore my pajamas downstairs to breakfast. It wasn't because I was too exhausted from planting. It wasn't because I had no clean clothes. It was the only way I could think of to keep myself from rushing out into the garden.

On the two previous mornings I had bolted out the back door right after breakfast. I did not read the paper first. I did not do the word scramble I normally use to crank up my brain. I barely combed my hair.

I just lathered up with sunscreen, scratched a bar of soap to put slivers under my nails before donning gardening gloves and heading out to plant. I learned the soap trick several years ago. It keeps the dirt, which inevitably comes through the gloves, from turning my nails brown.

The planting that weekend was compelling. At last the weather had cleared. I had been so cooped up during the rainy previous week that sunny weekend mornings drew me out early. I planted nasturtiums and basil in the "kitchen pot" by the back door, where last year's lavender, mint and tarragon were already pushing out new shoots. I planted two pots of dracaena and New Guinea impatiens by the front door, three pots of periwinkle, dusty miller and deep magenta geraniums by the garage.

I drove to Green Fields when it opened Sunday morning for more dracaena and some pale pink perennial geraniums. I had planned to use those geraniums around a blue ceramic birdbath. Pink and blue are a favorite combination. When I carried the geraniums to the center of the garden, the birdbath lay on its side. A nocturnal critter had knocked it over. The wide, blue dish had broken into pieces on the surrounding flagstones. So much for planting the geraniums. I would first have to figure a way to secure the pedestal and find a replacement top or brass sundial to sit on top. I brushed away the temptation to run inside and jump on the Internet to find a solution. That could wait until I finished in the garden.

The planting momentum continued. I filled a large terra cotta pot with graceful Richmondensis begonias and a spikey dracaena in the middle. I laid out a bed of dusty miller and begonias with copper-colored leaves. I positioned the trillium from the recent Roland Park native plant sale. Then my husband stepped out the back door and said we had visitors. As much as I was glad to see the company, that was it for my weekend planting.

Monday morning, I had to fight the urge to go outside before breakfast and put those positioned plants into the ground. I made myself finish household duties and writing work before letting myself out of my pajamas. It was the only thing I knew to keep myself inside. I have not become so eccentric as to garden in p.j.'s, and maybe that's a pity. The begonias were still not planted by the time temperatures soared to 90 later in a busy week.

By the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, those begonias, dusty millers and perennial geraniums, plus a new flat of pale pink impatiens sat waiting for me, unplanted. Next time I feel the planting momentum, I won't stop it. I'll just let it carry me over to become one of those eccentric Roland Parkers who walk the dog, or garden, in pajamas.