Tomorrow’s the day!

One more day until the mulch arrives and my vacation begins. I am as jittery with excitement as a child before Christmas. My to do list for the garden is growing: mow, cut back forsythia, read about when to plant the seeeds I want to plant, check on the last frost date, sow seeds, mulch, weed, transplant bee balm.

I don’t know how I’m going to make it through six days of vacation time, at home, in warm spring weather, without buying plants. We saved the rest of the garden budget for May, when it’s truly time to plant, but sowing seeds is going to make me crazy with impatience to see green stuff in our garden.

I need to take a step back and be grateful for the green that’s already emerging. The lilac is leafing out, and I see flower buds like tiny grape clusters on it. The indigo salvia is leafing as well, with flower spikes forming. The cat mint is already a fluffy knee-high mound; the lemon balm is returning. The yarrow, the bee balm, the rue: these all have new growth. And the first tulip finally opened down by the mailbox! They survived my amateur attempt at transplanting last year!

So there is some leafy life. But there’s way more bare brown earth than growing green flora. I’ll have to wait weeks for seeds to sprout, and more weeks for them to grow, and more weeks for them to flower. When it’s warm and sunny, and birds are chirping, and tulips are blooming, and I’ve got dirt under my fingernails, I’m going to want flowers. I will want to fill our flower boxes. I will want to plant roses. I will want to put annuals in the empty spaces in our flower beds. I want something alive and new, and I’ll have six days of freedom in which I’ll have to restrain myself.