Spring Cleaning in the Garden

It's Spring Cleaning time in the garden and I'm enjoying it! Our first crocus opened up yesterday afternoon. The first flower is always a great surprise but was even better because we'd had a couple of inches of new snow in the morning. Our apple trees are almost all pruned, only one more to go. The perennial beds are clean and the daffodils are beginning to grow. The lady bugs are out in full force. I raked some of the nasty leaves off of the grass along the driveway...ick...that early snow last fall buried some great treasures! There is still plenty of work to do, but it's a great start.

I like to prioritize the clean up tasks from the jobs I like least to those I like most. Cleaning up wet, decaying plant matter isn't my favorite so I do it first, while I am still so excited to be doing something, anything, outside. Each Spring I wait for the perfect day and then I tackle it. It's the day that the snow finishes melting off of the beds but the ground is still frozen. I can take care of business before the bulbs and the perennials begin growing without turning my beds into a mud bog.  It is satisfying to see the beds free of debris and to know that, unlike the laundry or dishes, it will stay done until next Spring!

After being cooped up in the house for months I am ready for some good old-fashioned, physically hard, work.  I like going to bed at night a little stiff from turning the soil, with a blister or two on my hands. I like looking out of my window at the little specks of green peeking through the ground and picturing the flowers that will soon follow. I look forward to planting the first peas (which I might do this weekend, just for fun), picking the first dandelion, eating something that grew in my yard instead of who-knows-where. Ahhh. Spring. I'm so glad she's here!