SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — It’s as sure a sign of spring as the first robin in your yard. Greenhouses are sprouting up in the parking lot of most Lewis Drug stores right now. The greenhouses have customers thinking of heading into their gardens in a few weeks.

It won’t be much longer before Lewis Drug stores will be opening the doors of their greenhouses to customers who can’t wait to start planting.

“It’s a big endeavor. We have many locations and just getting greenhouses put up, the fixturing and getting ready for products, it takes us a couple of weeks,” Lewis Drug Category Manager Doug Schroeder said.

The greenhouses are empty right now, but Lewis has the layout all figured out.

“We have a separate greenhouse where you will find all the vegetables. In this one here, will be all the blooming annuals,” Schoeder said.

“Spring is coming!”

Customer Lois Tim has her greenhouse shopping list ready to go.

“Bouquets of flowers, hanging baskets to hang on a shepherd’s hook by your deck, or a bouquet like a large pot that you can put flowers in out front of the house,” Tim said.

Some of the greenhouse product has been migrating as the season changes. These are stacks and stacks of potting soil and mulch being kept right now in a Lewis employee parking lot because their regular storage area is just too snowy. Eventually, all these stacks will be moved across the street into the Lewis store parking lot.

“It will be kind of a chess game for a while. But one thing you know about living in South Dakota, the weather’s always a factor,” Schroeder said.

Lewis will stagger the arrival of their trees, plants and flowers to match the time of year when they’re ready to plant. During a cold, wet spring like this, it requires a little patience to cure green fever.

“We’re ready for the season. I hope everybody else is,” Schroeder said.

Lewis had to delay setting up greenhouses at their stores in Madison, Huron and Brookings because of the snow.

There’s too much ice at their Ellis Road location on the west side of Sioux Falls to put up a greenhouse right now.