Dig it? I Can Dig it, Baby!

I spent 4 hours outside today. The sun was so warm that I almost took OFF my sweatshirt. Lucy and Sophie were sunning on the cement. I was able to get one garden bed cleared. Last year spending 4 hours on one bed would be labeled as downright failure, this year it’s a major achievement.

I plopped myself on the ground, no more balancing, no squatting rapidly up and down. This year the trash can was carefully placed within reach. Clipping (not pulling) was the now the rule, and anything that could be chopped up and left as mulch was (WHY didn’t I do this before?). I slowly and surely cleaned up, inch by inch. I wasn’t getting as much done as before, but I noticed that I was doing a better job. I didn’t have a problem taking the time to pull the tiny little clumps of weedy grass from between the Sempervivum tectorum (that granny fave succulent A. K. A. Hens-and-Chicks or Common House Leek) or to untangle the hoop fencing or to SLOWLY sweep the walkway. I was even monotonously picking walkway stones out of the lawn, one at a time.

Spending all those weeks under forced bed arrest at the hospital or cached safely on the sofa in front of bad TV for those 6 months house-bound in Adrian, had taught me, I was forced to sit there and be patient.

Here I was, happily sitting in the mud, spending hours close up and personal with the dirt and the dead things and the random green shoots that are now my garden. I liked it. Lucy would stroll up once in awhile to check on me, breathe in my face, seemingly wonder what I was doing digging in HER dirt and playing with HER sticks but then she would loudly sigh and run off to play.

I pictured myself becoming that old man carefully trimming his flowers and artfully pruning his tomatoes and yelling at the kids on the block to PLEASE step on the grass. I actually longed to be him, a zen Mr. Wilson (I am referring to the Dennis the Menace antagonist, NOT the cast away volley ball).

I went into the cocoon at the end of September as the fluttering butterfly and I emerge now as the slower worm.

But it’s spring and I am here and I am oh so happy to be out again.

- - - David