The Secret of Happiness

There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown says that the key to happiness is to have a convertible and a lake. If it's sunny, it's a good day for a drive, and if it's rainy, it's good for the lake.
I think a garden fills the bill for both kinds of weather. If it rains, it's good for the garden, and if it's sunny, it's a good time to go plant something or weed or just check out everything and make sure it's all growing according to schedule.
Farmer blood must run through my veins, but of course it's Irish farmer blood, so success is anything but a given. At any rate, the madness sweeps over me some years, some days, and I come home from the farmer's market or the feed store or a nursery with flats of flowers, pots of tomato plants, eight varieties of lettuce, three varieties of chard, bags of soil, manure, compost, stakes, string, and seeds.
This week, the madness was especially strong, and I filled the back of the car three times, on Tuesday and Friday and again Saturday. Pansies, nasturtiums, tomatoes, more tomatoes, peppers, basil, flowers I never saw or heard of, lilies, peonies, strange herbs...
Louis, under orders, had turned over the main vegetable garden, so there was a place to put most of the stuff. And the garden up against the house and the one on the other side of the yard soaked up the rest. Well, most of the rest-- the nasturtiums went into a pot which I hung by the front porch, where no one but the neighbors can see it.
After hours spent groveling in the dirt, most of me hurts, including strange places that never hurt. Still, the results are, for the moment, satisfying. Everything is cheerful and green and sort of orderly. There is the possibility that in six weeks everything will be higgldy pigglety, overgrown, turning brown, consumed by wilt or mildew or insects, but a garden is nothing if not an exercise in optimism and hope.
So for now we can stand back and look at the vegetables in their rows, the flowers in their beds, and enjoy a momentary sense of accomplishment. And tired, fall into our own bed with visions of pesto and tomato sauce and salads that are, we hope, to come in time.