In winter, sometime after Groundhog Day and about when the weeds have reached kneehigh, I take up the planks that provide a walkway through summer rows of spinach and romaine, fennel, peas, and pak choi -- or whatever caught my eye thumbing through Shepherd's seed catalog the previous January. It's the first of the spring gardening rituals, a preamble to the heavy spade and shovelwork to come. And each year the planks are more weathered and wormeaten, wood returning to earth. But for a brief few days each year the twin boards ramp skyward as if to mark a trail to some garden of the etherworld where only ghosts or angels tread, weightless, upon their backs.