Gardening has its challenges, that’s for sure. Insects, diseases, uncooperative weather and even neighborhood cats.

I’ve managed to stay pretty upbeat about those challenges, embracing each as a new opportunity to find and try creative solutions, to experiment and learn, and just enjoy the ups and downs of gardening.

It’s all part of the process, after all. The mid-winter dreaming and planning. The sheer hopefulness of planting seeds in the earth. The surprises. The good-humored competition with friends for the earliest peas, spinach, tomatoes—it’s all fun.

Imagining is the best part. My Swiss chard may only be ten inches tall but, in my mind, it’s reaching its roots ever deeper into the ground to bring up minerals from six or eight feet down. Healthy, hearty—BIG—Swiss chard is what’s growing in the garden of my imagination. I imagine the amazingly powerful herbal tinctures I might learn to create with my vigorous and healthy herbs.

Today, in the scorching 95 degree heat, I watered. I could no longer stand the drooping, wilting, pure suffering that was going on in the garden. And, watering was the one garden chore I could muster up the enthusiasm to tackle this afternoon.

As I watered, contemplating the health of my soil, the need for more mulch and wondering about the optimum number of blossoms to leave on my giant squash vines to ensure truly gigantic results, I saw movement on the sidewalk, across the street.

A woodchuck!

Although I’ve seen woodchucks in the drainage area on the edge of my neighborhood, 10 or 12 houses away, I’ve never seen one so close to my house. A little nibbling on weeds in the grass, then he or she looked both ways before heading across the street into my next-door neighbor’s yard.

How quickly my dreaming turned to worrying. To drama. I feared the worst; it’s only a matter of hours before that woodchuck discovers my little front yard vegetable garden. Disaster is surely imminent.

I completed my watering task, the whole time glancing warily over my shoulder for the chubby little rodent.

No more visions of deep, probing roots or rich, organic soil teeming with microbial activity. No more wondering about how I might handle fall’s bounty of pink banana squash that could, in fact, be too large for my oven.  No more speculation about how many more days my beautiful red lettuce might make it in this heat before bolting. No more glowing silently with pride at my sweet little eggplants.

Worry. Disaster. Visions of a plundered garden.

This is not good. Certainly, with gardening as in other areas of life, there must be something to be said for the power of positive thought. I might consider myself lucky to have seen the little rascal waddling across the street in my general direction. After all, I’ve been fairly warned.

Although building a fence overnight isn’t an option, I can still do a little reading on this new challenge. After all, isn’t creative problem-solving one of the things I love about gardening?

Worrying, and all the negative energy and images it brings, surely can lead to no positive resolution of this or any other gardening problem. If nothing else, it’s no where near as much fun as idle dreaming.

Today, I resolve to direct my gardening energy toward dreaming and finding creative solutions, rather than toward futile worrying.

Woodchuck, I’m not afraid of you!