"Our life really is a haunted one. The simplest thing in it is a mystery, the invisible world always lies round us like a shadow."

                                                                               --Harriet Beecher Stowe

**

For the first time this season, I spent most of my day in the yard--clearing leaves, bagging sticks, pruning shrubs, transplanting spinach. Tom was outside, too, beginning work on the new garden boxes he's building from scavenged boards. This means disruption: I've got to pull up most of the slate paths I've laid so we can accommodate the new design. And then I'll have to buy a giant pile of fresh soil and toil for hours filling the vast new containers. But the end result will be both more beautiful and more utilitarian, so the fuss is worth it.

Every year I am amazed at how much work it takes to keep this tiny city plot in cultivation. How ever did we manage 40 acres, two babies, and a barnful of animals? "The simplest thing . . . is a mystery."

Thanks to a day spent crouching and stooping and lifting, I am embracing the satisfactory ache of my gardening muscles this morning. It's funny: I am active all winter--working on my mat, trudging through the neighborhood--but gardening requires a particular combination of leg and back and arm and shoulder muscles that my winter upkeep regimen doesn't seem to touch. Gardening isn't just puttering among the flowers; it's real physical work . . . lugging rocks, digging holes, shoving wheelbarrows. But I am always glad to feel my body rising to the challenge, especially this year, after having been sick for so long.

Today will be cooler than yesterday, and will warm up more slowly. And I've got house and grocery chores to deal with as well, so I may not get much done outside. But I will start prying up the paths, and I might transplant a couple of elderberry shrubs. I cannot resist the carillon of spring.