The Rituals of Spring
We live in Massachusetts now,
so the story is a little different. After four Nor’easters in March, we’re
expecting… another cold front this weekend – what fun!
Still. This past weekend, we
had a Saturday that was (mostly) sunny and (relatively) warm. And so I enjoyed
my first gardening day of 2018.
Granted, no actual gardening
activities took place. Saturday was strictly a cleanup operation. This
included:
- Sawing up giant limbs from our giant pine tree
that had been deposited in our yard by the various previously mentioned
nor’easters. I learned that sawing up branches is a much more exhausting
chore than I would have imagined.
- Raking leaves out of the front beds and the
gutters on the street. This resulted in a surprisingly large pile of
half-composted leaves. My initial plan was to bad ‘em and have ‘em carted
away. Now I’m having second thoughts and may fill up the wheelbarrow and
take them back to the compost heap to cook further.
- Spring-cleaning poop patrol. We have three pups
now since adopting Daisy last March. Three dogs + short winter days + four
nor’easters = months of neglected backyard poop patrol = well, I just did
the fifth pass through the entire backyard, and I STILL found desiccated,
aged poops back there to shovel.
After four hours of raking,
shoveling, and sawing, I was exhausted. But as David Letterman used to say, it
was a good kind of tired. AND for the first time in a while, I found myself
developing some new hair-brained cunning schemes.
I totally neglected the yard
for nearly all last year. In the spring, I optimistically bought and planted a
bunch of shrubs and perennials… and then spent the summer neglecting them.
There have been casualties, and I question whether I deserve to buy more and
try again. That’s how my brain works.
On the other hand, near the
end of summer I was motivated to clean up the beds in the back yard and put in
a few things, and it was lovely: it was nice to spend time out there, and I was
proud to have friends visit and enjoy it, too.
I want that for this house.
Murder House deserves better treatment. It deserves to have a backyard
paradise, just like Little Blue House. Hopefully with fewer murders.
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