The long winter and slow spring have had everyone wishing for warmer weather, especially those who rely on the soil for their livelihood.

Farmers and landscapers are all behind their usual planting schedules, but Marion’s Eden Florist and Garden Shop owner Steve Gonsalves says, “I think it’s going to be a great spring.”

Chris Makowski of Cervelli Farm in Rochester sure hopes so.

“Quite often we might have had corn in the ground already,” she said of the family farm’s most popular crop. “We don’t have anything in the ground. Hopefully soon.”

Makowski said the planting is a little behind other years, but the schedule is always subject to change.

“At this point, it’s going to be a later season,” she said. “It’s going to affect everybody. You’ve got to work with what you got.”

On Thursday, Makowski said her family hoped to get planting within the week, depending on how wet the ground is.

At the nearby Lucky Field Farm, Weston Lant anticipated starting plants outdoors within a few days.

The snow helped to insulate the ground and kept the frost at bay, which was a positive, said Lant.

The farm provides local customers with fresh produce during the summer and fall through a subscription-based plan. The offerings, as always, are dictated by the weather.

Beans are going in earlier than usual and other produce will come later than last year, but he said his customers won’t suffer.

“We’ve just sort of got to mix it up,” Lant said.

He has been watching and studying the weather patterns and said the harshness of the winter and the quantity of snow bothered him.

“I would postulate that weather prediction will become less accurate for a while,” he said.

How the weather patterns shift will affect food production and the way farmers plant.

“It’s not so much what we grow as how we grow it,” he said.

Predictions for the summer are that it will be dry and warm, said Lant.

With an irrigation system in place, he isn’t too worried about having food ready to pick in June.

“We’ll be able to feed them,” Lant said.

For Gonsalves, the cooler temperatures have put his landscapers three weeks behind their usual schedule.

“Now that the snow has melted, we’re slowly waking up and coming out of our igloos,” he said.

Gonsalves said it’s time to get moving with lawns and gardens.

“The winter did some damage,” he said. But, “The heavy snow pack did insulate some of the plants.”

Hungry deer and other animals may have nibbled on plants they wouldn’t usually touch, but many bushes and shrubs will come back to life soon if they haven't already.

At this point in the season, it’s time to take care of weeds before they sprout and to start fertilizing, even those plants that may appear to be irreparably damaged by the winter, Gonsalves said.

Boxwoods flattened by snow can be tied up with jute twine, and as soon as they start to leaf, the dead branches on hydrangeas can be trimmed back.

Evergreens that got singed by the arid winter still have hope, too.

“They’re not dead. In time they will green up again,” said Gonsalves. “Not to panic.”

Gonsalves believes the harsh winters are cyclical and compared them to a string of bad years from 1976 to 1978.

“The world is not coming to an end,” he said. “Three or four winters and then the pendulum will swing.”

In the process, some plants will die off.

“The plants really do take a beating, but it’s nature’s way to prune,” Gonsalves said.

He urges folks to start calling their local landscapers now, and also promises that the mounds of snow will soon become a dream.

“In another month we’ll forget it all ever happened everything will be green and lush and we’ll all be happy and smiling again.”