Mud Skating

Being on a hillside, water usually drains pretty well from our garden (sometimes, it seems, too well). The exception is this short period in earliest spring when the surface of the ground has melted, but a deep layer of solid ice underlies it; this is when I go shuffling and slip-sliding about the garden... it's mud skating season. Our soil is mostly clay; sticky and slippery when wet, hard as a rock when dry; the only way I've been able to grow delicate, fine-rooted plants is to excavate out the clay and refill the hole with loose humus. In the next week, I will end up on my bottom at least once, trying to negotiate this quagmire... I love the appearance of grassy, natural paths through our woods in the spring and summer, but I've gradually been converting most of them to bark chip pathways, because of this mud season. We need a nice, warm rain to take out the ice, and then a visit by the windy March lion, to dry the mud. This season will pass all too quickly though, in the rush to spring, then another summer; I want to savor every moment of this transition between winter and spring... even if I'm on my rear end in the mud.