Digging in.

We don’t wake up with the sunrise to get out in the garden. It’s still winter, we’re still young and waking up slowly and sweetly is too lovely to give up.

Besides, we know that just as much can be done in the warmth of a setting afternoon sun as in the morning.

In the midst of winter, the earth is still cold but at our seaside home it is damp and soft, making it easy to dig our trowels in, pull up weeds with our bare hands and plant our hopes.

After moving into a new house in Port Townsend last November, Libby and I are spending January planning our flower garden for the summer.

The yard art we decided to keep.

Here are some of the first tasks on a journey which I hope will lead to a blooming paradise this summer:

1. Figuring out what to do with the yard art left by the home’s previous owner.
2. Planting what we have brought with us from previous places, like a pot of fever few, a twiggy mint plant and some new birthday hellebores.
3. Organizing our garden bench
4. Pulling the weeds, getting rid of the ground cover we hate, mulching and preparing the dirt for planting.
5. Deciding on our seeds and garden design

Using a sick day to organize seed packets.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how planting things is a bit like telling someone you like them: you’re putting something out there that might get dug up and eaten by a bird. It might just stay there, not doing anything at all but eventually molding back into the earth.

But it might grow, slowly reaching out of the depths of the earth into the spring sun, getting taller and taller and finally blooming into something sweet and beautiful.

Time for the hellebores to bloom.

That’s what I’m hoping for.