the spring merit badge

I look down at my arms and notice the scratches around wrist and elbows have turned red. By tomorrow these lines will fade down to small scabs looking like they were drawn with a ruler. But I know what they are. These are my merit badge that spring has started.

Crouched close to the dirt, clipping away at dead grass and pulling out leaves, I listen to the sound of a plane going overhead and the children playing at the adjoining park. Basketball, screams, games of interpersonal chance float in percussive syllables over the soft spring air. The smell of melted dirt fills my nostrils. For a split second it clicks back into place. This is the garden. Five months of snow and persistent cold have kept me away, but here it is again.

I see the garden as it was last season. The day lilies which towered and bloomed persistently until October are now just a few dried leaves and husks on the ground. The marigolds which insisted on growing into bushes make ecru skeletons clutching the dirt. The rose bushes, ah my precious wild roses, are a mange and chaos that cannot be ignored. The discipline of my clippers is met with thorny protest. The beauty I've wrestled with has left me looking mauled as though by a beast. Last season was indeed lovely. But it's done. Spent bushes and plants left to seed must be removed. Dead leaves applied for winter warmth must be raked away. Dead grasses clipped. It was beautiful. And now it's just time to start again.

Each year I start this process hoping to head off any weedy chaos at the pass. But tending this patch is nothing like cleaning a kitchen counter. It would seem the same rules apply, to set up a system of organization, to create clean surfaces, but it doesn't. There's too much letting go and waiting in the process for it to be anything like neat and easy. I know what I'm doing - setting myself up for more work! I spend 4 hours clipping and raking and hauling. And I know as I do this that there is no guarantee in this act of preventing work later on. I'll be here, playing catch-up with nature, every week, all season. I already know what I have to do when I come back next week.

Gathering clouds part for a bit and I see the flower bed, now flat and bare save for the first few patches of plants coming up. There's the daffodils, ringed by day lily, some bearded iris, the poppies, the dianthus, the holly hocks, and the roses. Other surprises await. Will the marigolds and zinnias I let go to seed come back? In a month so much more life will have exploded from the dirt you'd be hard pressed to say its the same place. In two months the day lily will start blooming and the roses will be out. Sounds a bit like I know what will happen. But I don't. The blooming is like a christmas present I get to open over and over. I can barely wait.