From Guest Blogger Liza Gyllenhaal, who also took these photos:

It’s been the cruelest of winters in southern New England. Last week, as spring officially arrived, so did another inch of snow in the Berkshires. Daffodils and tulips, wiggling their way up through the earth, froze in place — like the fingers of lost Antarctic explorers. The squirrels, driven to suicidal measures to crack what had been our fool-proof Yankee bird feeder, took to digging their back claws into the porch screens, launching their bodies forth like trapeze artists, and hungrily scrabbling in a mouthful or two of seed before gravity brought them thumping back to earth. It was a sad, discouraging sight, though I couldn’t help but sympathize with their sense of desperation. It’s the end of March— and the morning temperatures still hover routinely in the teens.

I’m not sure how you’ve made it through this bitter, blustery period, but two things have helped me — and both involve making beds. Vegetable beds, that is.

A couple of months ago the seed catalogs began to arrive. For those of us who garden, these glossy four-color brochures are more enticing and dream-inducing than anything Saks or Bloomingdale’s has to offer. Cuban Yellow Grape cherry tomatoes! Succulent Deer Tongue Bibb lettuce! Neopolitan pole beans! Ariane orange peppers that ripen in 65 days!

I drooled over the sun-drenched photos of dangling eggplant and climbing peas, the neat, bright rows of rainbow chard, the hillocks of flowering nasturtiums. Our primary growing season in the Berkshires is a little over three months long. My fenced-in vegetable garden has eight raised beds, each about the size of a twin mattress. But I usually find myself buying enough seeds to keep a full-sized farm supplied for a couple of seasons. At $5.00 or so a packet, I can’t think of an easier, more productive way to stare down winter’s hoary gaze — and win.

Unless, it’s cooking.

It must be some primordial yearning — a harking back to our Neanderthal beginnings — but there’s something about these long, dark days that makes me want to roast things. I’ve done my share of stews and daubes, but I still find nothing more satisfying than a simple whole roasted chicken. And, if you set your bird down on a bed of vegetables and pop the casserole in the oven for an hour or two, you’ve got a remarkably easy single-dish meal that’s worthy of a dinner party.

Since last Thanksgiving when my brother and his fiance put together a fantastic medley of roasted fruit, herbs, and vegetables as a side dish for the turkey, I’ve been experimenting with new combinations of vegetable beds for roast chicken. Root vegetables are particularly delicious roasted this way, tending to caramelize and deepen in flavor after mingling with the pan juices. Turnips, B-sized potatoes, and carrots are terrific together — and sensational when served with sauteed string beans and mushrooms.

Another winning medley is Brussels sprouts, chestnuts, and shallots which, if you feel like upping the ante, are terrific tossed with slab bacon strips and pomegranate seeds.

Whole fish is also fantastic baked on top of vegetable beds. Here’s a great, low-fat fish recipe that I’ve used for snapper and flounder: Baked Fish on Vegetables (click here).

And be sure to try this succulent vegetable and pork roast dish: Oven-Roasted Vegetables and Pork (click here).

Start creating vegetable beds of your own— either kind — and let me know what you come up with.

Liza Bennett Gyllenhaal is a novelist who divides her time between New York City and The Berkshires. Read about her novel "Local Knowledge" at www.lizagyllenhaal.com.