Those nice folks at my favorite Annapolis Starbucks - the one in Harbour Center - know when it is spring.

I switched to iced lattes, and I beg for their used coffee grounds.

As a gesture to the community, some Starbucks will bag up their used grounds in a reuseable coffee bean sack and seal it with a nice stamp, leaving it in a bin out front for customers to take home for free.

I am not so picky. The staff simply knots off the top of the garbage bags in which they dump the grounds and hand them over the counter to me. By the time I am ready to put the mulch down, I will have spread hundreds of pounds of coffee grounds around my beds.

And I add pounds of coffee grounds to my compost pile and turn it thoroughly to heat up the pile  and jump start the decomposition.

Roses and hydrangeas especially like the grounds. And because it is so high in nitrogen, it is good for fast-growing vegetables, especially tomato plants. I have read that coffee grounds also retard tomato blight.

This year, I plan to put lots of grounds - and some crushed egg shells - around my hostas. I understand that will keep the slugs out. We will see.

I don't have azeleas, but I understand they love their coffee, too. And so do the worms.

It looks like I am not the only one who likes my coffee in the garden.