This morning I took some rounds around the garden, taking stock of the spring growth around this place. I’ve realized that, despite my best efforts, things just continue to grow. Because I quite certainly do my best to kill them (not on purpose, of course). The blueberry bush has its little leaf nubs, as does my hydrangea, crabapple tree, and raspberry. The rhubarb is still going strong, pushing bright pink and green growth out of the brown earth.

When I look around, I see a lot of work ahead of me. The vegetable garden needs cleaned out and prepped. Trellises need built. Rain barrels need installed. There’s a lot of manual labor in store for me, especially when I put off a lot of it in the fall. There’s also a lot of expense that I’m really not looking forward to. Trellises need purchased, rain barrels need equipment to install them, and we’ve got a cubic yard or two of mulch to buy and install to help with weed control (which has gotten increasingly out of control with each season’s passing).

Sigh. I promised myself that this year would be different, and that this would be the year that things didn’t look like such a cluster. But I’m afraid maybe this will just be another year of watching things go to hell.