Plopped down in my morning coffee spot, massaging sore muscles, contemplating the last 27 things to do on my spring cleanup of the gardens. Hoping to get all creative and stuff. Surely I could invent a good reason not to do any of that today.
When a woman ran past the front of my house in a wedding dress.
Screaming: Wheee! To the cars passing by, honking their horns.
Jumped up, took a look around, hoping to see another runaway bride.
My cute town does not have an overabundance of runaway brides. It’s Running With Ed weekend. A 26-mile relay race, to benefit local schools.
Lots of people happily running a marathon - many in costumes. Didn’t realize that May is almost over until I saw the sprinting bride.
The race became my really good excuse. To not do any more hard gardening work. To sit there and clap and cheer and wonder why most of those runners were smiling.
It's always a curiosity to me. Who in their right mind would willingly run 26 miles? I wouldn't do that. Even if zombies were chasing me.
But I'm nearly finished with a marathon of my own making.
Raking and weeding and planting and mowing. Spring clean up is hard, hard work. Taxing muscles that spent a whole lotta time reading books during the long, cold winter.
Maybe that's what they mean. When people say: Pick Your Poison.
If you find a passion, it feels like fun, even when it’s backbreaking labor. Or. It feels like fun right up until the day you rip off that wedding dress and say: I don’t wanna do this anymore.
Which is what I did. When I ran out of steam and hired a landscaping service to collect all the broken tree limbs and other stuff I raked from the garden beds. The guys removed an entire flatbed trailer of debris.
May, in the mountains, is always known as Mud Month. Once the snow melts. After our epic winter with 400+ inches of snow, we're dealing with some serious mud!
It's been an exhausting few weeks of playing in that mud. Spring clean up.
Some of it heartbreaking, badly damaged fruit trees. The disappearing act of quite a few flower bulbs (ground squirrels gobbled them up.)
The Willows are gone. Nibbled right down to the dirt. The moose were starving during this long and difficult winter. It's fine by me. Happy to donate Willows to this worthy cause.
During an extreme bout of cabin fever, I decided to spend oodles of money on a completely inappropriate patio set.
* If you look real close, you can see the muddy footprints on the white cushions. White. What was I thinking? Dog, Charlie, happily approved of my design.
The gal who published that book, Do What You Love & The Money Will Follow, clearly did not take into consideration a career in gardening. Well. I suppose most people don’t call it a career; they call it a hobby. Some days I call it an obsession.
I visit flower festivals and then I want to make my own backyard equally beautiful.
Did you know that USA gardeners spend $50 billion dollars a year? I think most of that is me.
I don't love spring cleanup, or weeding, but I do love planting. Digging in the dirt. Shopping for brand new beauties at the local nursery. Always have.
Just as soon as I saw I was nearly done with all that hard work, I instantly decided to take on more hard work. :) Placed an order for more waterwise perennials.
Because that’s what being a gardener is all about, don’t you think? The power of positive thinking. The belief that this year, oh this year, this flower season is pretty much guaranteed to be marvelous!
This Spring has been a little disappointing. Dull grey skies, plentiful rains. As if we needed more moisture after our epic winter snowfall. It’s a miracle anything survived. Including me.
So far, my gardens are showing zero enthusiasm toward the merry month of May.
Which is why I thought you might enjoy these photos from The Bulb Festival. This last photo could be a dead giveaway, as to where I was ~ when I was tiptoeing thru the Tulips.
