Time outdoors in the garden

There's so much energy, encouragement, and comfort to be had outside in the garden, whether it's 'natural' or created. Being outside, tending plants, while listening to and observing birds -- these are things that I love. My intensively managed patches -- the main vegetable garden, the satellite garden, the borders, containers, and hanging baskets, not to mention the meadow -- are just about all that I can manage.

Weekends and spring evenings fly by, but I'm mindful that even if I had all day every day, that there are other things to observe and learn about, in addition to what I enjoy in my garden. I had a lovely Sunday afternoon planting perennials that needed to be in the dirt, moving plants around in containers, transplanting tomatoes, sowing more squash seeds, weeding the 'back forty' forest-to-be, as well as weeding the front meadow.

But I guess the message is that we should create the garden that we enjoy to maintain, and not to extend ourselves beyond that. It should always be fun, I think, and once gardening becomes 'yard work' -- it's not fun anymore.