Happiness has returned to my life and its name is… gardening!!
I have tried really hard to stay positive through the end of this interminable winter. But just like the urge to pee gets unbearable when you’ve been holding it a long time and you make the turn onto your block, so have I been losing my mind these last few weeks itching to get into the garden. Maybe about 3 weeks ago, I got out there and started cleaning up an iris bed. And then… it snowed. Right on top of my newly cleared bed and everything else, ridiculously, insultingly late in the season. Then again on the first day of spring. It has been too cold to do anything since.
Saturday I was determined to start mulching. But… snow again! Gah!! (Flurries, mercifully). I consoled myself with getting ready to head into the city to accept a lovely invitation to see A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (the 2014 Tony winner for Best Musical and a total hoot. Stay tuned for a post about the wonderful and unexpected evening. Life sure does take so many amazing and delightful turns).
I stayed up way too late on Saturday and, so, woke up groggy on Sunday. I stuck my nose outside… it was still in the 30s. Undeterred, I went to buy mulch. By afternoon it had gone up to a bearable mid 40s. And I went to hang out with my plants.
It was everything I’d been dreaming it would be. I spent a long time wiping old mulch and dirt away from the tops of rhizomes to expose them to the warming sun, then putting down bone meal and bulb food. A bit early, perhaps, but I couldn’t wait anymore. It was like communing with old friends about making it through a tough winter. Everywhere, vibrant little shoots were reaching skyward. The iris were positively dancing with green. I broke off tips of small branches to look for signs of life. Lilacs: budding. Hydrangeas too. Crepe myrtles taking their sweet time but green with life inside. Yucca plants looking a delicious lime green. Tulips so far being spared by the deer. Daffodils and hyacinths bursting out of the ground everywhere. It was a celebration.
Then, as I was heading inside, I spotted them: my beloved crocus, flowering. Weeks later than usual, but very much here now, the first ones, as always. We’ve all made it through. I sat on my steps and turned my face to the sun. Happy.
