When spring comes, two things happen to me.  First, I feel this urge to put my feet in the sand and hear the ocean waves crashing against the beach and second, I start fantasizing about a garden. 

Every year I dream up great plans for raised beds, rocky garden paths, and climbing green bean vines.   I envision a white picket fence to keep the deer out and a homeschool routine of weeding and watering as a family, while gathering our abundant crop in wicker baskets to bring into the house for canning and freezing.  And sometimes……sometimes  in my fantasies, I’m even wearing an ankle length skirt, an apron and a bonnet. 

But in 13 years of marriage, I’ve managed a garden only once.  And I think that only happened because my Dad came over and built the beds for me, my husband helped me plan and plant and I only had ONE CHILD THEN!   Plus, that one child who was about 9 months old at the time decided to take a big taste of freshly manured earth and well, I don’t think I got back out to the garden much that summer. 

So today, I again decided that I was going to have a garden.  I put my perfect garden ideas aside and picked a location close to the house that would require minimal work. 

And we dug……and dug….and dug.

We pulled weeds and turned fresh moist earth and sweated.   We oohed and ewwwed over fat squishy worms and pill bugs and larvae.   We complained about our sore backs, our dirty fingernails and our lack of progress…..and then we went back inside while a half finished garden plot lay churned up by the window. 

My hope is that we’ll get back out there and actually plant something edible to harvest, but I’m thinking we just had a good day digging  in the dirt.