Gardeners in the upper Midwest have to be slow to start, but also quick on their feet. We wait out April (and May) frosts and soil-soaking downpours, hearing and reading accounts of how great gardens in other parts of the world look while the garden outside our windows just look beaten-down and as discouraged as we are. We're just about to give up all hope when SPRING shines forth and we find that we are already behind schedule.

At least that's how the gardening year starts for me and this year my being felled by some virus or other gave the weeds an even bigger jump on things than usual. I'd gotten my garden gear together just before I'd retreated to shiver and sleep for four days and I had just one more personal challenge to overcome before getting out into the sunshine today. The last remaining hurdle was a sensible (to me) apprehension of being out there with the new neighbors.

Now, I wasn't too worried about the blended family group of five or six that's been wandering through the backyards, nervously looking around lest they be discovered by hostile residents:

But the new fellow in the 'hood is lean and mean and I surely didn't want to let him creep up behind me while I worked. I'd seen him cruising past my window every day for a week, looking very determined. You just wouldn't want to mess with such a well-designed killing machine at the top of his game:

As I saw it, I had two choices. Leave nature to the critters or get out there and grab a corner of it for my own. As soon as I figured that any passersby had passed by, I got to work, only to discover that this guy and his gang had moved into abandoned chipmunk holes next to the herb bed:

The ground bees zizzed between the end of my nose and my soil-working hands, but I didn't lose my nerve. The bees certainly didn't like my being where I was and I certainly didn't like them trying to bully me away from clearing out the runaway mint and oregano, but we could co-exist--at least until I figure out a way to get rid of them, anyway.

After finishing up with the little herb bed,  I headed for another session yanking garlic mustard from underneath the trees and shrubs. The stuff wages a never-ending attack, but the agencies that want homeowners to continue the monotony and futility of clearing it use tempting lies as propaganda. “If you keep clearing it, there will be less each year that needs to be cleared,” they lie and what kind of citizen would refuse to at least try to stamp out the Green Menace? Though low branches pull my hair and bent twigs spring back to scratch my face when I do my GM duty, do it I do. Stalwart and brave, stopped by neither large mammal herd nor small wolf on the hunt, I worked until a scuttering demon ducked under a leaf almost out of my sight, but enough within my sight to send me shrieking, running back behind closed doors for protection against this beastie:

We gardeners of the upper Midwest are brave and stalwart, but still . . . we do have our limits.

(Thanks to the talented people in the world whose photographs I filched to illustrate this post.  The photographed critters are quite identical to the ones in my yard--except the coyote here is much leaner, looks much hungrier, and is therefore much scarier.)