Hurts so Good!
It's spring - and in spring a gardener's fancy turns to . . . well - it turns to pure lunacy.
In no other season will you hear the sight of a weed greeted with cries of pure joy. ("Hey - something green!!") In no other season will you see otherwise sane people walking slowly around the yard peering intently at what appears to be plain dirt and smiling and chuckling to themselves. ("I think I see growth!") And in no other season will you hear so many people actually celebrating aches and pains. (Hooray - it's gardening time!!)
I witnessed this phenomenon in myself just yesterday. For the first time we had both a sunny and warmish day and a weekend at the same time. I got up, threw clothing on and raced to the yard. So much to do! But with temperatures still going down to the low 20s I didn't dare do much of it. Too early to prune back the roses or rake away the mulch, or cut back the perennials. Even too early to pull the so-called tender perennials, because they have been known to surprise me by making a comeback as days warm up. I was about to get depressed - the urge to garden being so strong after a long winter practically hibernating indoors- and then I spotted it. A weed!!
I pounced on it with glee - and found another, and another. I fell on my knees on the cold damp earth and began to pull and untwine what seemed like miles of interconnected weed grass and creeping charlie. I spent a blissful hour, smiling to myself, humming, crawling around the ground pulling away. And while I was there I kept exclaiming merrily as I saw new signs of welcome life throughout that small patch of earth.
And that night at dinner I found myself showing my husband a pair of hands that were red and scratched and had the beginnings of blisters, not to mention dirt caked so deep that a vigorous scrubbing had been unable to eradicate it all. "Look," I said, "Isn't it WONDERFUL??"
As I watched my husband carefully order his face muscles so as not to appear to be too blatantly humoring me, I realized the lunacy of that, and so refrained from rhapsodizing about my aching back and stiff shoulders. Who but a passionate gardener can understand the sheer bliss of reawakening those muscles, getting the seasonal calluses started - hardening ourselves off, so to speak, to prepare ourselves for the season.
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