There’s something pleasing about the garden as I start to prepare the beds. I can’t prepare the whole garden at once—it’s simply too big—so I do it bed by bed. Two or four a weekend, until all thirty-two are done.

I’ve planned the garden over winter, so I know what will be planted in each bed. I choose which beds to prepare each weekend based on when each crop gets planted. So I end up with a patchwork of beds—some waist-high in weeds, others beautifully prepared and ready for planting, some already planted. Every weekend, the weeds are fewer and the tidy beds more numerous.

Little by little the work gets done, the garden gets planted, until that magical day in mid-November when it’s all done, and neat rows have replaced sprawling weeds.