Boneyard

There are two times of the year when my garden pretty much looks empty. In the fall, when I clean out summer’s overgrowth, and now, beginning of spring, when I clean out what winter has managed to damage. This year we got a severe freeze several nights in a row in December, so there was a lot of damage. So it’s been several weeks now of cutting back and clearing out, and I’ve still got a bit to go. I have just gotten to fertilizing the roses – twice now for some of them, since Darwin and Chance decided the organic fertilizer with bone meal in it was like little doggie crack. So we re-built the barricades today – a four foot high green plastic fence stapled to stakeposts. We’ll see if it keeps them out this time or if they find a way in again.

I spent most of the afternoon clearing out the front yard, cleaning up borders that have barely seen sunlight for the last year but are now bare thanks to the freeze. So now the bones of the garden are bare, and I find I kind of like it. I have some daffodils coming up, and find little bulb surprises popping up here and there under the dead branches as I clear them out. It’s nice to see those little colorful blooms, to be reminded that in a couple months all this will be lush and green for many months again, before summer’s dry spell turns it brown and I’m back to trimming it out again.

I love to garden but have tired of my little suburban lot. I long for my golden ranch, with a real, big vegetable garden, with real soil, instead of a foot of soil on top of decomposed granite — fenced from the dogs, please — and lots of woods and meadows and a pond.

But for now, it’s finding the bones in the boneyard.