Happiness is a warm garden

[flea]

So, I had a moment - close to an hour, really - of utter content this weekend, amidst the sleep deprivation and crying. Sunday morning, 10 AM, mr. flea at work, I take The Fussa outside in her chair to do some yard work. It's sunny, about 55, she's in a light fleece snowsuit and her yellow hat; I'm in fleece pants and a t shirt. I fill the garden waste bin (neglected these 6 weeks), rake up some leftover piles of leaves that have been sitting around through or snowy patch, and take the loppers to the jungle beside the driveway. She watches me sort of idly, then fall fast asleep in the sun.

Having finished the chores, I begin the fun work - opening up the new garden bed. I opened last year's right after we moved in, and didn't look carefully enough at the contours of the yard. I was in too much of a rush to plant things - it was already April and full spring. But over the winter I discovered the location of the old garden bed, quite clear in the slight elevation of the soil. Sunday I started to turn it over. It's pure dirt - a bit heavy, but it's been wettish lately, and to be expected. But I can go a whole spade-blade down and not hit clay. Whoopee! I dug and turned and de-clodded and broke up the grass and shook out the clinging soil in the sun, with the baby sleeping by, and realized I was internally singing goofy love songs. It was the happiest I've been in a long time. It's funny to realize what makes me truly happy at my advanced age - and to wonder if my entire former career, graduate school and all, was only because of my abiding love of dirt.

The garden stands, at this point: camellias blooming, the ones in back in need of a trim but I have no ladder. I have been hacking at some of the other very overgrown shrubs, painfully aware of my inexperience as a pruner. I only hack what I know will return with vigor - have not yet dared to touch the rhododendrons, which need a good haircut. Daffodils are 2 inches up, in massive numbers despite the fact that I dug up 400 last summer. Sweet william looking vigorous in the flower bed by the driveway, which has been driven on by my landlady over the winter. Various pansies a little tattered by the snow but hanging in there. Everything else is sleeping still. But I've just ordered: peas, spinach, 2 kinds of lettuce, carrots, beets, and filet beans. Will buy tomatoes, possibly cukes (bought on a whim and were the most successful thing last year), eggplant, peppers, as seedlings, later.

Comments

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds lovely.