April 4th, 2006
Ah, Spring!
I can’t wait to see if I planted my tulips successfully. Planting bulbs struck me as mysterious and complex before I did it; but since there was almost nothing to it, I keep wondering if I missed something.
So often projects seem prohibitively difficult when I’ve never done them, or worse yet if I’m not sure I know how to do them. The idea of spending some of the precious stuff of life - time and energy - on something that might not even turn out? It’s really no wonder I hesitate. As I gather more in reserve (Will is two now!) I get more and more adventurous.
The bane of my yard, the vegetable garden, hasn’t actually functioned as anything but a weed pit for a few years - with the exception of some pea-pods we grew three summers ago.
A few of the kids are interested in having their own plots, so there should be sufficient family-wide motivation to get us moving and enough momentum to keep us going. I know it is at least possible to stay on top of the weeds (which are unbelievably annoying to me) especially if I share that duty to the junior gardeners - that is, once the “sprouts” have grown to the point that they are clearly “crops.”
The “garden” and surrounding area is hopelessly ugly in its present state, and I never knew how to fix it - unless it was to remove it’s borders and turn it back into yard, and Ken wouldn’t go for that. But just yesterday I caught a vision for the space, and as I folded clothes on the picnic table I planned the steps it would take to make the area neat and fresh and more useful for our needs. This plan is especially appealing to me because it will require minimal cash and only a moderate amount of grunt work to complete.
Of course just about every project takes more time and money and energy than one plans to expend, yet now that it’s no longer intimidating to me, I can’t wait to start!