Pretty close to an obsession

My thoughts are consumed with my garden this year.  I haven't planted one in two years and this has weighed heavily on my heart. 

 

One of the two main garden plots that I have lovingly tended over the years currently appears forlorn and forgotten. It has ripped and sagging deer netting - destroyed by a persistent barrage of deer-bullies last year who devoured the entire strawberry patch. The ground itself is so overgrown with grass and weeds, it is almost impossible to recall a vegetable garden ever being here.
 
But this will change.  The deer netting will be restrung and the earth will be turned.  Seeds will be planted and my hands and heart will remember the healing this soil brings me. 

 

I've always considered gardening my own personal form of therapy, so to have gone for so long without touching the earth, well, it doesn't speak highly of my current mental state. Heh. 

All joking aside, though, every morning I look for signs that the ground beneath my feet is warming.

 

I'm skimming less and less ice off the stock tank in the mornings.

 

Though the persistent frost still coats everything through late morning, the beautiful red rhubarb tips pushing through the earth are more visible each day.

 

I have garden thoughts saved on my phone, pieces of paper, scrawled with seed and plant names, scattered on surfaces throughout the house, and piles of gardening catalogs with corners of pages turned down.  I have seed orders planned (Wintersown.org, Territorial Seed) and am investigating new raspberry canes and blueberry bushes. I want to plant asparagus.

I am ready. I am anxious to try again.

A couple days ago, a sweet friend bought me a few seed packets from a local market, knowing how happy this would make me. With the exception of the Titan sunflower, the seeds are all early season plants that should go into the ground in the next four to six weeks.  I'd plant them tomorrow, if I could.

Beau says he doesn't care which variety of garden pea I plant this year, he's just excited that I'm going to be spending time outside again.  Me, too, Beau.