I read something last night by the late, great garden writer Henry Mitchell that made me gasp out loud. In his wonderful memoir One Man's Garden, he writes, "Ideally, the garden should be perfectly weed-free by early April ... "
Ha! After cruising around the garden last night I realized it's not perfectly weed-free, not even close. It's a perfect mess and at the moment it seems an impossible task to set it right - the weeding, the pruning, mulching, lugging those heavy bags around, planning, planting. My list of "to-dos" is long, my time not so long, and who knows about my energy level?
But optimism takes hold as soon as I notice buds on the hydrangea and the magnolia tree and rosettes forming on the sedum and whatever bulbs the squirrels didn't get are beginning to poke their pale little heads up. One nice surprise: a lovely circle of white crocuses tinged with purple has appeared around a bird bath. The squirrels must've pigged out on the tulips.
