Removing the Undergrowth

My garden needed a little attention this weekend.

Perhaps it is the outrageously warm weather.

Perhaps it's the fact that my ski season has been cut short due to said warm weather.

Never mind the reason, I found myself in front of the beds with a spade, a rake and a set of clippers. As I cut away last year's dead, I found a new little world of green waiting to be exposed to the sun. I found my tiny rose bush had survived a winter season and that our tree that sprouted the summer we lost Samantha had grown pink flowers.

I remembered how much I liked my garden.

I kind or conduct my garden the way I conduct my life.....if you're non-evasive and pleasant in my space, you can stay, even if I don't know quite what you are.

I have a lot of lovely unknowns in my garden.

I raked leaves through my strawberry patch, worried that I might pull strawberries up in the process but here's the skinny on strawberries......

Strawberries, for as lovely as they are, are tough little berries; vicious in fact; they are currently staging an invasion on the vegetable garden....lobing tiny strawberry seeds into the zucchini area.

As I raked through the patch, not a single strawberry plant uprooted. But I did smell a lovely, spring scent....wild mint. Ahh, wild mint....I will wage a war against your weedy attitude in a couple months but for now you can live with the crazy strawberries.

I packed three bags of old, winter growth.

I sat in front of my garden and promised this would be a new summer; a summer of frequent watering's and diligent wedding's. The garden sighed and rolled it's eyes, it hears my promises every summer and still manages to produce lovely tomatoes despite my neglect.

As I packed up my tools, a butterfly landed on my rake and visited for a while.

Hello Spring.