I have Cuban pastries in the oven and a full pot of coffee. It is spring. My English daisies are happy. I have watched the squirrels taunt and torment my cats. A day of rodent reckoning is long overdue. I daydream of seed packets and tilling soil and compost. I love the smell of dirt. I am eager to have a garden again. I hope to have a modest kitchen garden and a yard filled with flowering and fruit bearing trees. I will have herbs and vegetables. I can see it. I have imagined it hundreds and hundreds of times. The color spectrum, the time of year things will bloom. The repeaters and the show offs. I can see the borders of monkey grass, descendants of the grass lovingly moved and transplanted from the house on Tuscaloosa Street, to Cutler Ridge to Silver Palm to Newberry. I can see the movement of the sun and the shadows cast across the lawn. I believe that a dream can materialize into a reality. It is faith inĀ knowing your heart. Dwelling within is the truth, the seeds of purpose and intent. It is all a matter of where the seeds are planted. Is care taken to prepare the soil, amending for what will best support strong roots, proper hydration and drainage and protect from drought. Once planted, is attention paid to weeding and mulching, maybe recognizing when nutrients are low and adding fertilizer. Even the most hearty pf plants can hit a stressful season and need fertilizer. When the lawn man comes, is he careful not to weed whack the trunks of the young seedlings, damaging them at their foundation? A constant awareness, a vigilance makes for a bountiful harvest. Without it, an entire garden can be lost. You can be left with only onions. One can be thankful for the sturdy onion but who can eat onions for three meals a day? If the choice is starve or onions, we must make do. But, a new season comes and you try again. You keep a gardener’s journal and note the mistakes, the weather, the things that worked. And maybe you plant less. There is time to expand later. Focus on getting it right before you try to make it a spectacle. A small garden is better than a weed choked patch of nothing edible.