Well, we got the last of the rocks all moved as of dusk yesterday and now there's a bare hill in front of our house awaiting the arrival of the heavy equipment.

It's a very, very dangerous thing to leave me with vast swaths of bare earth in the spring. The rest of the year I'm a reasonably rational person but when spring comes these huge waves of

Must.

Grow.

Things.

wash over me and I'm just not responsible for my actions.

The middle of last week I stood in front of the partially denuded hill below our home, arms akimbo, and considered all the possibilities. The spousal unit caught sight of me. He saw the big swaths of bare earth. Immediately the "This Can Not Be Good" expression washed over his vaguely alarmed face. I motioned to him to join me.

"Wouldn't this hill be beautiful if I planted it in swirls of different coloured hostas?" I gestured grandly, drawing imaginary rivulets of big leaved hostas cascading down the hill.

Cautiously, he allowed that yes, it would be a pretty spectacular sight and what with their amazing root systems and all, hostas would do a very good job of keeping the bank from eroding.

He asked me how many we would need.

"Oh, not that many," I said, hoping to deflect the practical issues.

Sadly, he knows me too well.

"How many is 'not that many'?"

"Uh, well, something in the neighbourhood of 1,000 hostas." I did my best to project the idea that this really wasn't a big deal.

There was a longer pause while he digested that number. Surreptitiously he gave me The Look, the one that says, "How is it again that I came to marry this woman?" I had to move quickly before doubt mushroomed into refusal.

"If I dig up every hosta plant on the property and divide them, I can make 1,000 plants for next year. That will give the earth on the hill a year to settle so it will be stable enough to hold the plants. I'll plant them permanently next spring."

He considered that. Free plants. Prettiness. A troublesome landscaping problem solved without involving heavy rocks or railroad ties. So far no mention of him had slipped into the project.

"Sounds like a good idea."

I gave him a few seconds to enjoy the beauty of it all.

"I will need a temporary nursery bed, though, to put the new hosta in."

Again with the "How is it again that I came to marry this woman?" look. I gestured grandly to a corner at the very bottom of the clearing below our house. "We could put it there," I said. That would be the royal we of course, me being the royal, he being the bed digging peon. This fact was not lost upon the spousal unit.

"How big does this bed had to be?"

I want to stress that what I said next wasn't exactly a lie, it was more of an, uh, miscalculation, a slight underestimation of what would be needed. "I think if I plant them densely I could get away with a bed about 4 by 15." It took him a couple of hours of extremely hard work to dig that bed because the area is full of rocks and half buried tree roots. Together we dragged wheelbarrows of compost down to improve the soil, dug it in.

And then I began to dig up hosta. And more hosta. And more hosta. Huge honking clumps of extremely heavy hosta, hosta that I surgically divided with a knife so that I could get as many plants as possible. I turned over the soil in the original beds and topped it up with fresh compost before re-setting in bits of the mother plants. It was a lot of work.

Then I'd trundle down the hill with wheelbarrows of hosta-lettes, squishing them in the nursery bed, watering them in well. When I got close to 500 plants it became clear I'd need a bed at least as big as the one we'd opened to finish up the job.

Which I kind of knew all along. The thing with peons is that you have to handle them gently.

With much eye rolling, prying of rocks and digging of roots, the spousal unit extended the bed for me. We improved the soil. This morning I snugged in the very last plant and not a moment too soon because if the hosta leaves had opened much more it would have been too late to transplant them. It's been a race all the way.

My body is sore from all the bending, stretching and lifting. My hands ache from the effort involved in breaking apart these heavy plants and their tenacious root balls. My knees are sore from all the kneeling. And yet, I am unreasonably happy. I cannot begin to tell you the joy I get just looking at those soldierly little rows of plants to be.

Possibilities. I look at these tiny little bits of green and I see possibilities. Renewal. Beginnings.

It's as close to faith as I can come.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 385.25 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers