I’ve written before that I’m a writer with a gardening problem, but my condition is never more obvious than this time of year.

Between late March and mid-May, three things come together for D.C.-area people who don’t mind dirt under their fingernails: many of the plants you want return to life, most of the plants you don’t want run rampant, and the mosquitoes remain offstage.

Since I work from home, I only need to look up from my desk to see the state of my yard. There, I have problems that I can attack without waiting for a reply from a source, the end of a tedious battery-life test, or a go-ahead from an editor: weeds to yank out, seeds to sow, flowers and shrubs to move around, borders between the lawn and the landscaped areas to tidy up.

Some of this work is hot and exhausting–I must have transplanted around 100 pounds’ worth of plants this spring–but much of it can be done in short stretches before I shower or right after some other chore that takes me outside, like getting the mail or taking in the trash and recycling. Plus, with many of the fast-spreading weeds that infest my yard every spring–I must have yanked out 15 pounds of chickweed and deadnettles so far–there’s the seductive promise that with a twist of a weeding fork in the right spot, I can painlessly dislodge a massive clot of uninvited foliage.

And as a 10-minute break stretches into an hour and I realize that my hands have gotten too dirty for me to want to check my phone, upstairs I have a half-written e-mail, a document that stops with my byline and a blog post that only consists of a handful of links. But when I do return to those things, the view outside will please me so much more.