Food for the Soul

Today is the 17th of February. The sun is shining; it seemed warm but the wind took the temp down a notch or two. My early white crocus have been blooming for the last week and today I spotted a yellow one. Ahh yes, food for the soul.  There is nothing like garden therapy. It's exercise for the body and eventually yields food for it too. But more than that - the dialogue between digger and soil, planter and plants, weeder and weeds is food for the soul and inexhaustible. It reaches back into past, grounds me in the present, stretches into the future, and for me always references the Creator.  The lessons repeat until learned, but the landscape changes from year to year - never a boring moment! This year, I'd like to keep track of lessons learned and gems gleaned during the gardening year via my garden blog. Secretly I hope it will help me become more disciplined and bless me with the joy of writing, something I've wanted to do for so many years.  Who knows where it might lead:).
The first thing, now that the crocus have announced the birthing of Spring, is to get organized.  It's something I think should really just flow from one year into the other but somehow that just never happens.  So in my mind, I can be very organized and disciplined but how to manifest it still eludes me.  Praise the Lord, He is granting me another day, perhaps even a full Spring, with Summer and Fall to follow!? All the more reason to see if I can hold on to it through writing about it.
I like to divide my garden into six sections and work in each section once every week.  In that way, I hope to keep up with tending to planting, weeding, and maintaining.  Hope is the operative word.  In a perfect world, I'd set it up and then it would just work exactly that way.  In my imperfect world, it at least gives me a certain structure that helps me keep on hoping to do better this week and the most amazing thing is that my flowers have never said that they'd withhold their blooming until I'm done with the weeding.  In fact, they sometimes help with covering up some of the weeds although that is not as helpful as one might think and most of the time the weeds will triumph eventually if not kept in check.
So when I think of the divisions this year, I think of the section around the east and south side of the house to the deck as #1, including the strip with the bushes and the roses, and also along the driveway (watering sections 1 and 2?); the middle section from the big gate to the back where the Korean Fir stands sentinel #2a, #2b, and #2c (watering section 3?); the south section along the fence from the big gate to the hill where the pine is #3 (watering section 4?); the back of the house #4; the hill; and the garden section.  The watering sections 5 and 6 of the first watering timer and the sections on the second watering timer will change because of the changes Juergen is making to the lines.
Juergen is taking the cement blocks of the raised beds apart and will use them to replace the wooden block barrier in the back of the hill.  Though he meant well, they did not work out as well as he had thought.  I'm glad we're redoing the area, it's still a plan in progress.
This blog is today's contribution to the garden; getting organized so I can start working the plan tomorrow.  By the end of this week, I hope to have done the following:

• raked out the vegetable area that Juergen rototilled (Mon)
• cleaned out winter debris along the east side of the house (Tue)
• weeded alongside the driveway (Wed)
• Thursday is a non-gardening day because of my work schedule
• weeded out winter debris section #2a (Fri)

Wow! Here goes my week as regards my garden - I'll keep remembering that it is my therapy! I'm planning to work no longer than 2 hours at a time, more or less:).

Yippety, Skippety! My heart sings!