Deep dark depression…Blessed misery…If that little rhyme doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because you didn’t grow up watching Hee Haw every Saturday night like I did.

It doesn’t translate well to 2007, but at the time, to my 7- or 8-year-old self, it was humorous and entertaining to see grown men and women dressed as country bumpkins popping up from behind hay bales delivering stoopid jokes and chewing on hay.

The reason this little ditty is apropos today is because I played a bit of hookey to work in the garden. But rather than it being an uplifting experience, all I could see were the problems. For example:

-The seedlings I transplanted looked pathetically small and vulnerable in the harsh, cruel sun. How will they ever survive?

-My hostas, astilbes, daylillies, lilies, helebores and other perennials need to be divided. Is it too late?

-There are a couple of beds with a BIG weed issue.

-There is a pussy willow bush that is just aching to be incorporated into a proper border.

-I have three other bushes waiting to be planted as well as a few extra hollyhocks that don’t yet have a home.

-My specimen trees need to have the suckers removed.

-I still have about 20 bags of mulch to deal with.

-The new bed next to the driveway is mostly leaf mulch on one side and topsoil on the other. However will I marry the two?

-I still need to set up my fountain in the back.

-I am finding volunteer cone flowers in odd places that need to be relocated.

-I still have house plants waiting to be repotted.The list goes on and on and on…When will I ever find the time?

Doom, despair and agony on me! Deep dark depression. Blessed misery! If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…

If you remember the rest, please let me know. It’ll drive me crazy until I find out.