There will come soft rains

Our neighborhood is waking up from winter. The trees are in flower (unfortunately, this also means a lot of the ornamental pear trees, which frankly stink), the early spring bulbs are coming up and blooming. The birds are moving into the birdhouses we put out. We’ve taken the cover off the patio swing. The early-bloomer neighbors are turning on their sprinklers.

It’s time for yard projects.

We’ve got an area behind our house that, once our maple trees leaf out, spends most of the year in shadow. Grass doesn’t grow particularly well there, and as often as not it’s a mud bog after the sprinklers come on. We’ve been wanting to do something about it for some time. The plan is to put in a patio next to the shed, put in a path along the rest of it, fill in with some new dirt, and put in a shade garden on either side. This is the year.

Our neighbors have been wanting to put in a trampoline since they moved in, and want to set it in the ground. This is their year, too. They’ve arranged for a power digger (of some kind) to come and do the excavation. The only problem, they explained to my wife the other night, is knowing what to do with the dirt. Since we’re looking at shelling out for a lot of dirt (and in spite of the cliche, dirt is not cheap), we had a few suggestions. We’ll be getting some dirt, literally dirt cheap. We just have to supply the labor to move it from their yard to ours.

Of course things notice when you have a little bit of money. I noticed the fence between us and those same neighbors is threatening to fall down. I almost wish it would, actually. That’s right next to where they want to put in their trampoline. They could just dump it across the property line onto our side, saving me about 300 steps x 10 cubic yards of wheelbarrow trips.  But I’m not ready to build another fence yet. The last one I built needs to be stained.

That’s the fun thing about having a yard. No matter how much work you do, there’s always more work to do.  So I try to put a brave face on it by quoting Carroll O’Conner’s character from “Return to Me”: I’m blessed with work. The kids like it. On extra, non-repetitive yard projects we pay them some money to help out. And I’m starting to consider paying for some of the repetitive ones, too, like mowing the lawn.

Yards aren’t all toil, though. This year spring coincides with a sudden resurgence of interest in Nerf guns from my boys. They’ve been able to coax me outside several times for some semi-painless warfare. I do enjoy occasionally running around in the yard like a kid, sprayin’-and-prayin’ under heavy fire. And occasionally my wife and I get to actually sit on our patio swing and enjoy the spring air, watching the birds visit the feeders. I find that warm, earthy spring days bring out my hidden optimist. Yard projects always seem so much easier, and more fun, in the early spring.

As I write this it’s raining. I’m happy to see it. I know I’ll have to turn on my sprinklers eventually, but I put it off as long as I can. I live in a desert, so we have to use force to get most things to grow, but for a little while in early spring it’s fun to pretend that everything would grow of its own accord. Spring rains help prolong the illusion just a little longer.

It’s spring, and the world is coming alive. It’s contagious. It’s good to get outside again and try to catch it.