Waiting for the arrival of spring during late winter can be quite frustrating. There are lots of false starts and the longer winter persists the more impatient gardeners become for spring to begin and for plants to start growing and for flowers to start blooming. Some years the frustration level is greater than other years, but there's always a prolonged sense of anticipation followed by the gradual arrival of spring. Of course, in the mountains the false starts can be rather severe with hard frosts sometimes occurring as late as June. A particularly severe hard frost can kill off tender annuals and so one must develop a strategy for dealing with this issue such as selecting cold tolerant annuals and planting in waves so that if an early wave gets killed off, there's already subsequent waves planned.