This is the busy time in the garden, the time for the hardest work to prepare the way for the growing season. Like painting, much of gardening is about the preparation – of the soil, of the beds, of the pots – and if you stumble at the start it can be dangerously difficult to right things. On the other hand, a lot of gardening can be forgiving, in the resilience of plants, and their ability to spring back from even our most heinous acts of destruction and apathy. These are lessons everyone should learn.

After gardening at this house for over ten years, I have developed a rough system that works, somehow. This is the first time I have made a list of chores, divided roughly into the following tasks to do:

* Amend

* Prune

* Plant

* Revise

* Divide & Conquer

The Amending involves improving the soil around specific plants. This year, the new redbud (Cercis), the weeping larch, the Kwanzan cherry, the Ostrich ferns, and a Lady’s Slipper orchid all require a little extra pampering. In this case, it’s a bunch of shit. Cow shit. Bags and bags of manure are hauled in from Lowes and worked into the top of the soil surrounding said plants. I prefer this more organic product instead of the man-made fertilizers not only for its environmentally-friendly aspect, but also because it’s more difficult to overdose. Being that it’s mostly a top-dressing, there is little-to-no direct contact with the roots, resulting in no burn.

The Pruning is an ongoing task, but one that must be done delicately as pruning at the wrong time of the year can be disastrous. I am not in any way an expert on pruning, and wouldn’t dare advise on trees, but generally if the tree or shrub flowers, the best time to do so is immediately following the flowering. Which means not all of it can be done at this time of the year. In some cases, like the Japanese maples that are large enough to survive such haphazard hacking, I’ll go ahead and prune away at them any time of the year, but for things like the mockorange and lilacs, I’ll need to wait a bit. The most onerous pruning usually involves the hydrangeas – so many thick stems that need to be cut back individually, and then trying to extract all the fallen leaves from between those dense stalks. Good for the forearm though.

The Planting is the most fun part of the process, purchasing and implementing new friends in the hopes of finding the perfect plant for the perfect place. At this point in the garden, there’s not much room for more, and this year is more a time of cutting back and thinning out, as things have gotten a little too lush and grown in. However, there’s always room for something, and in this case I may try some Lilium among the Ostrich ferns, and pray the rodents don’t destroy them all. If that proves too difficult, there’s always container gardening – something I’ve never given proper attention to in the past. I never realized the impact that containers could have, especially on the patio. They may start out underwhelming, but if cared for correctly, the growth of annuals can be just as full as a five-year patch of any stalwart perennial, and often enough far more colorful.

The Revising is the problem-solving of the garden, done after a year or two of realizing something is not quite right, whether in the excessive growth of a dogwood, or the poor placement of a self-seeded spruce tree. Mostly the revising is about moving things, digging them up and putting them somewhere more fitting. Occasionally it’s about getting rid of something altogether – usually something overgrown or past its prime or usefulness. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to face, and if at all possible I’ll try to pass a plant along to friends or family before getting rid of it, or plopping it into the more wild area of the backyard to let it fend for itself.

The Dividing and Conquering sounds the most challenging, and it often is. Particularly when certain plants have grown into unruly and extensive groups. Like the Miscanthus. The not-so-aptly nicknamed maiden grass can drive its roots down deep, and grow so tightly packed that only an ax, wielded with great force from high above, can hope to pass through its inextricably-woven system. I’m afraid the same will hold true for the several clumps of cup plants that have seeded themselves and taken over. A charming plant, it can also be overbearing and imposing if left to its own devices, towering up to ten feet, and supported by thick tuber-like roots. If I don’t put it in check now, it will be too late.

Finally, there is The Mulching. I only do a proper mulching every few years, mostly from laziness and partly from a judicial decision that yearly mulching is over-excessive and unnecessary. If it’s not broken down, there’s not always a need to mulch again. (Truth be told, only one year should be skipped in this manner, but I’ve stretched it into three. Sometimes four. Again, laziness.) This, unfortunately, is one of those years that can’t be skipped. Wish me, and my back, luck.

Fulfilling a promise made a week or so ago, the blue blooms of a tiny Scilla patch have opened and brought a bit of the sky down low to the ground. For many years I dismissed the tiny early-bloomers like these, not wanting to waste my time and effort on something that would require a zillion bulbs to make the most minor impact. Much more bang for your back-breaking buck in planting a tree or shrub. Yet I did manage to sprinkle a few around in the backyard, and they’ve been coming back and actually seeding themselves in the surrounding area for a couple of years. As time goes by, and winters like this last one bleed endlessly into spring, I find great joy and relief in seeing the first signs of garden life peeking through the brown layer of oak leaves and dead grass stalks.

It has me rethinking my aversion to the little beauties, and I may end up popping a few more in the ground this fall closer to the house. They’re so small and inconspicuous except for when they bloom that they shouldn’t be a bother.

Thanks to the camera, little blossoms like this can take on gargantuan proportions, becoming something quite different as you see in this progression of shots. It makes you realize how something so tiny, blooming in a sea of brown, still has its own power.

Locating a flower in bloom has always been a talent of mine. I can spot the lone lupine along the highway while speeding along at 74 miles per hour. I can pick out the tiny clusters of white blooms riding the crests of the sweet woodruff a whole backyard away. I can hone in on the scarlet banner of a fluttering cardinal flower in a meadow otherwise over-run by Queen Ann’s lace. In the case of the cardinal flower, it’s simply a matter of noticing what’s different. Certain blooms stands out like that. But in others, it takes a trained eye to pick up on the subtle call of the flowers – such as the dangling fragrant bells of the Solomon’s Seal, hidden beneath the variegated foliage, or the inconspicuous chocolate-hued bloom of the European ginger.

So much of life is about looking deeper, peering beneath the surface – and the garden is no different.

This is the Lenten Rose, Latin name Helleborus. When we first moved into our home, I plopped this into the backyard bed, almost out of a mandatory obligation that one must have at least one Lenten Rose to welcome the spring, but the fact was I had never even seen this plant in person before the blind purchase. For several years, I was unimpressed. The evergreen foliage didn’t fare well in our Northeastern winters, looking ratty and half-dead at the turn of March. It took a year or two before I had the balls to whack off the most decimated leaves and allow the plant to rejuvenate, but once I learned its resilience it made a much better show of things, finally deigning to bloom about five years after planting.

While the blooms are welcome, they are sometimes damaged by the late-winter snows we usually get. Another issue is the way they are held on the stem: drooping downward. It’s more pronounced after the frequent April rains, so unless you’re willing to perform ground-level acrobatics, it’s difficult to get a good view, and a good photo. Since I don’t like manipulating the flowers I find in the garden for photographic purposes, it makes it tough to get a decent shot, but you get the idea. There’s a different type of charm that comes from a rose when it weeps.

This small patch of Scilla siberica marks the first bit of greenery and color the garden has produced this year. It goes head-to-head with the blooming of the Helleborus a few feet away. It’s been a slow spring to break, and I’m hopeful it continues to take its time before the deadening heat of high summer. Most years the beauty of spring goes by too fast – one of the reasons I love it so much. The temporal, the fleeting, the evanescent – these will always have the greatest draw. In people, and in plants.