And the trillium Fritillaria affinis are blooming.  (Thank you, http://myfoodandflowers.wordpress.com.  Not trillium but Fritillaria affinis.) Spring has taken its time.  Waking to bird song from the open window closest to my pillow before the sun.  Planting plans floods my consciousness.  My second thoughts are of neglected gardens and things planted in haste and without the followup care needed to establish them.  The beds in the back garden are weedy and overrun with a few perennials that hog space and push out everything else.  I’ve pulled and arranged, especially last fall and transplanted some things from the front garden that needed dividing.  Without real plans. The winter has not been kind and for moments yesterday I felt the sting of failure.  But gardens need tending and care and the emotions of the gardener are dug in like compost. Like soil enrichment, the consequences are visible a season in the future.  Or two.  And grieving has not been good for my garden. The gardens of my Indianapolis home were ambitious.  Now I remember them as such beauties but I worked very hard with a heart that pulled the beauty from the soil.  And those beds were not without withering and dying.  In Madison, since David’s death, gardens are afterthougths and responsibilities, more burdens than works of love.  I’ve worked on them and have not sat in their midst.  I have the time, if I wanted to take it, but not the will.  This is not a willing spirit and weak flesh.  Both are weak and it does show. But daffodils bob and wave and the trillium are blooming.  Spring renews and the work of the fall — bulb planting in the front garden and bed defining in the back garden — shapes my first thoughts this morning.  Is this the year to truly begin again. Third thoughts this morning are of planning a corner of the back garden.  This was an awful, ugly little part when we moved in but there is an old lilac, an overgrown forsythia and a few stones laid for a bench to sit on.  Here is where I will make my stand this spring.  A cleaning, a design, a planting, and faithful watering.  Some grass seed for the lawn that butts up to the edge and mulch to keep the weeds at bay. Such a simple plan.  Self consciously, I thrill to this sure sign of spring deep inside.  My perennial resilience is sending up shoots.