Today was your typical Monday morning. 18 things on the “to do” list. The first item was a priority for today – Collect all the dead plants from the planters. Two reasons. First of all, we had a hard freeze over the weekend and everything that was alive on Friday was not alive on Saturday. (Luckily I had the sense to move all of my potted herbs inside and cut the last of my sweet little blooming hydrangeas on Friday, right before the freeze.) The second reason to do this today – Tuesday is trash day. Gather up the dead plants today; get them out to the trash tomorrow.  Simple enough.

Ya; right.

I gathered up all of the dead stuff in pots. It took longer than I anticipated. It always does. As I was doing this, I couldn’t help but notice the annoying little voice in my head that kept nagging. And nagging... “Look around you. There is certainly a lot more to do around here than the dead pots.  What about the dead peonies. And daylilies. And hydrangeas. And clematis. And roses. And…” “UGH!!!  STOP TALKING!!”, I wanted to scream. But that stupid voice just continued. “It’s a nice day today. Tomorrow IS trash day, you know! What are you waiting for? Don’t be a procrastinator!! And (this is the biggie); if you DON’T do it… Who will?” 

Ya. No one.

So what if I just decided not to do anything at all? What if I just left all of the dead stuff there for now. And said that I was gonna get to it. Soon. Real soon. But I didn’t. And then winter came. And there was snow. And cold. And all of the dead stuff stayed right there through winter. All, well… dead. I’m not saying that I would EVER do that, of course. I guess it could kinda… accidentally… sorta happen. Maybe?

OK, Ya. It did. And when springtime finally came around, all of the new growth started coming in. Or should I say, TRIED to come in. Around the dead stuff.  Not a good plan, really.

So, in the end, I decided that today was THE day. For yard work. All day. Five HUGE bags, cuts and thorns, a couple band-aids and an aching back. Upon completion, my reward was a hot cup of tea and an Aleve. I sat down (Ahhhh…!) at the kitchen table and admired the vase of beautiful hydrangeas that had been in full bloom just days ago. Time. Where does it go…? The “to do” list from this morning was sitting there on the table. I grabbed a pen. Task #1 “Remove dead plants before trash day”. Check. Alrighty then. Guess I will just carry those other 17 items over to the Tuesday list… And Tuesday is trash day, you know.