Hello - a little post about gardening, and happiness...

I've been out there with my garden, clearing, weeding, dividing and re-planting and generally yanking stuff out. It's a new thing, this removal of stuff; the garden has reached its tipping point. The shrubs I planted four years ago have settled in and spread, obliterating the perennials that were planted alongside them to make the garden sing in its first few years. Though I always knew in my head that this day would come...this time when I would have to re-gig certain things because they had (shock horror!) actually GROWN...it never seemed possible when I started out. Those little plants, with so much bare earth around them.

...from tiny acorns and all that.

I work quickly, and in a rather slap-dash fashion. There isn't time to linger over anything too long, and I am a one-woman-band when it comes to my garden.

These first bright cold days of Spring (can I say Spring? or will I jinx it?) always both delight and panic me. Small voices sometimes spoil the loveliness of it by reminding me that my garden should be beautiful, always...After all, I am 'that gardener woman' who writes books about gardening. I don't want to be the proverbial dentist with bad teeth. But getting out there and doing what needs to be done generally lets me zone out from this chatter. I think about time passing, and my family, and how exquisite it is that there is new life underneath all the dead stuff I am clearing away. The important stuff - the fat, bright buds of living tissue emerge, and the futility of hating on myself for being unable to attain 'perfection' gets composted with the rest of the dead wood. I go back inside, hot and aching from my allotted two hours - full-hearted....happy.