First Crocus

"Why put off 'til tomorrow what you can postpone 'til the following spring?"

- Slacker Kate

Those were my famous words last fall when I decided to ride horses instead of clean up the garden beds and prepare them for winter. You know the drill, rake out the leaves, snip the flower stalks down to the ground, blah, blah, blah. At the time I had all sorts of valid reasons* why this made sense.

But, the true valid reason was that it looked like a whole lot of toil and trouble and I just didn't feel like working that hard. Now I'm working twice as hard, raking up about a hundred pounds of soggy wet dead leaves.

But look who I found underneath that slimy mess! First Crocus blossoms of the season.


* There are two schools of thought on garden clean up. Postponing that hard work until spring adds interesting texture to the winter garden. Tall flower stalks encourage snow to drift, giving plants more moisture. But, I'm discovering spring clean up is twice as messy. And, also a little tricky. Since I have to carefully work around the new growth so as not to damage this year's flowers.