While I was weeding

I love the few months of winter snow coverage when the colors of flowers, the summer greenery, and the striking fall foliage have turned to a dreary gray-brown. Particularly in my own yard. I am not a faithful gardener and snow covers up a multitude of sins.
Once the snow melts, I find myself constantly apologizing to my neighbors because, no matter how hard they work to create a beautiful, tidy, well-groomed, colorful landscape in their own yards, mine is the one they see when they look out their windows. So I have a love/hate relationship with spring.
On the other hand, I love the sound of the birds who have returned to our newly green community. I love the splash of color that crocuses, forsythia, and daffodils provide. I even enjoy the yellow of dandelions in the lawn (although I hear from my more fastidious friends that they don't appreciate my permissive attitude once the fluffy seeds hit the wind). But Mother Nature has the strong hand in my landscape design. If it grows on its own, it flourishes. Plants that require a lot of nurture don't last long in my yard.
Still, I will cheer on my husband or daughter as they go out to mow the grass (and dandelion skeletons). And once in a while I myself will dawn gardening gloves and march forth to harass the weeds or insert innocent and unsuspecting marigolds or tomato seedlings into planting beds. I try to speak encouraging words as I do so, to embolden them for their struggle to survive in their new and uncertain environment.