The Sweet Spot

May 01, 2024

I love this time of year so much. Spring is a much different atmosphere than fall, though both are showstoppers in their own way. Fall is a slow burn. It’s more like lighting a series of fuses along a marathon course. You don’t even have to bother running to get out of the way; you can amble at your own pace and catch plenty of inspired scenes.

Spring kicks down your door and leads a Mardi Gras parade through your living room. Spring is a nuclear power station strapped onto the back of your Vespa. It’s like all the vernal growing things are a crowd of Taylor Swift fans tripping over each other to get down front when the venue doors open. The crab apple in someone’s yard three houses down that was essentially dormant, standing around all “nothing to see here” in the morning is, by mid-afternoon, a magenta supernova stopping traffic. The velocity by which birth and decay happens over the course of this season is a master class in mortality.

There are so many elements of spring that I appreciate, that I celebrate, that I eagerly anticipate, but the greatest of them all is the narrow window when our yard actually looks nice. For about six to eight weeks around this time of year our yard is green and lush and thriving, drunk on optimism. The lilac tree shakes out in thick purple clusters, casting its heady perfume. The dogwood tree offers up creamy, vanilla petals like little tea cakes. A lusty apple tree by our driveway sports downy white flowers up and down its gnarled arms. This is the sweet spot. And the best part: I don’t have to do a damn thing but enjoy it all happening.

Those weeks pass through like the eye of a hurricane, everything in a state of beautiful suspended animation. And then it’s over. Our yard returns itself to a state of anarchy and mild neglect. Weeds muscle in like thugs. A handful of perennials gamely put up the good, but ultimately pointless, fight against the battalion of rabbits stationed in the neighborhood. It is a sobering day when you realize your search history for “fox urine” is longer and more comprehensive than it once was for “best bars near me.” In the decade or so since we’ve had this property the areas of grass have shrunk like the ice shelves in the arctic. Back by popular demand—our annual attempt to reseed. Fresh search results yielded a different “guaranteed to grow thick as Wookiee pelt!”1 Every morning I get back from my walk and water the dirt, trying not to feel demoralized, like the yard is both laughing at us behind our backs and asking “Can I speak to a manager, please?”

You can’t tell, but this tulip is being a total Karen right here. ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

I didn’t know I wasn’t going to be a garden-yard-obsessed person until I had a house with gardens and a yard to care for. I feel like in the run up to maturity and making your own life in the world, no one mentions that from time to time it would be wise to actually stop and ask yourself questions like: “Am I truly into record collecting?” or “Do I really like camping or do I just want an excuse to drink around a fire?” It seems trivial, but worth doing. It’s easy to let yourself get carried away on a tide of “should do, should be, should have” in an effort to make a life where everything matches.

It took me a long time to throw down the trowel and admit that I wasn’t cut out to garden in any form. I put in a certain amount of effort to keep things tidy. I’m sure the existing plants know they are in the equivalent of a safety school: not the best, but definitely not the worst. And we’re all okay with it because sometimes that’s the sweet spot.