If this wasn’t the coldest Mother’s Day ever, it had to be pretty close to the coldest Mother’s Day ever.  I do not believe the temperature rose above 50ºF.

Ordinarily, with the right kind of jacket, it would have been a marvelous day to garden a bit. But there was just enough rain early on to convince most people to stay indoors.

So that is what I did.

I also wrote a haiku.

A cold, cloudy day.
The garden ready for sun.
Pause the gardener.

Pause the gardener.

Not a bad idea in the middle of May when there is a lot to do in the garden and it seems there won’t be time to get it all done. When you get that feeling I have one piece of advice.

Pause the gardener.

Take a deep breath, relax a minute, and remind yourself that this feeling comes every year. Yet every year everything, mostly, gets planted. It’s just a matter of taking it one pot, one flat, one row of seeds at a time. You can’t plant everything at once, so why try?

Sometimes you look out the window and everything looks pretty good. Then you go by the same window ten minutes later, look out, and notice there are a few more weeds growing in the garden. Oh, the angst. When you feel like you’ll never be free of weeds, do you know what I recommend?

Pause the gardener.

Everyone has weeds and if they say they don’t, they are lying. Weeds cannot be stopped. We can slow them down, we can chop them down in their prime. Then they are temporarily gone, but they’ll be back. As sure as the sun will shine again, the weeds will grow back.

Then there are other times you wonder if you will ever get rid of that last little pile of mulch or those five remaining bags of mulch leftover from last fall. It just seems like every garden project is done to about the 90% level leaving that last 10% nagging at you all summer. When that happens, you know what to do.

Pause the gardener.

Make a plan. Maybe empty one bag of mulch each day or fill up one wheelbarrow from the mulch pile and spread it around. If you do that enough days, pretty soon you’ve conquered that last ten percent. Now you can sit and relax a bit, at least until you get the urge to buy more bags of mulch.

No matter what happens in a garden, or doesn’t happen, if it makes you anxious or antsy, remember this advice.

Pause the gardener.