Busy With Laziness No More

It was all so sudden after weeks of taking so long.

I went from finding the first crocus buds last Saturday to having Crocus blooms pop up and actually open up all over the place today.

It seemed almost frantic in the garden on this first day when temperatures topped out at almost 70 F.

The Crocus blooms must know how late they are in arriving compared to previous years, and are now making up for lost time.

There are so many to see; over there, over here, underfoot, all over the place. I darted around with my camera trying to take pictures of each one, as though I’d never seen a Crocus bloom before.

But what stopped me in my tracks, what made my gardener's heart quicken, was the first bright blue blooms of Iris reticulata ‘Clairette’
I didn’t expect these so soon. Last year, the first spring after I planted them, these Iris bloomed around March 15th.

So why are the Crocus blooms so late and the Iris blooms so early? We may never know. Each bloom knows its own cues and does as it pleases for itself. It blooms not for me, but for its own purposes. I’m incidental to this miracle of bloom after a long, cold winter.

But these blooms are the only cue I needed to feel like suddenly it’s Spring or at least Spring-like. It’s time to put my gardening jeans back on, clip on my Felco pruner holster, and head out into the garden to garden outside once again.

I thought of a thousand things to do at once…

Trim back the grape vine.
Cut back the perennials, left in the fall in the name of ‘winter interest’.
Chip and shred all the trimmings to make new mulch.
Sow seeds inside.
Sow early spring vegetables outside.
Harvest compost from the tumbler.
Refill the tumbler.
Spread new mulch on the garden paths.
Cut back the old Helleborus foliage.
Clean up the strawberry patch.
Enjoy the spring blooms.
Photograph the spring blooms.
Buy pansies the minute the garden centers have them for sale.
Pot up the pansies and put on the front porch.
Go to the Indiana Flower and Patio show.
Buy raspberry plants for new raspberry bed.
Look for winter damage and make a list of what to do in the garden.
Get out the patio furniture.
Bring out all the garden “doo-dads” stored away for winter.
Give away sod where a new flower/shrub border will go.
Enjoy the flowers.

In nearly an instant, I’ve gone from enjoying being busy with laziness, which is what we northern gardeners really do in the winter time, to being busy with activity, real activity, in a real garden. I must focus and take it one task at a time.

I'll have to remind myself that it took several months to reach my heightened state of being busy with laziness, and it will take me awhile to get back to being busy with gardening, in a productive way.

Gads, I’ll start out darting from one task to another like the proverbial bumblebee amongst the flowers, but then I’ll get the hang of it again, and become a bit more ant-like.

Eventually, I’ll settle in on a hybrid approach, sometimes being as busy as a bee and other times being as focused as an ant, either way being busy with gardening once again. Maybe by mid-summer, there will be a chance to steal an afternoon to be busy with laziness. In the meantime, between now and then, there’s a lot to do.

I can hardly wait.