There can be no doubt about it now, spring has sprung and is making up for lost time. No sooner did the weather have us in shirtsleeves than the grass greened up, the forsythia and magnolias got dressed, and the daffodils opened with what appears to be more than their usual fanfare. All practically overnight. My serviceberry (Amelanchier בAutumn Brilliance’) transitioned from winter to spring so quickly that I probably could have sat and watched its buds swell and stretch clusters of fuzzy calyxes toward the sky. That’s my kind of entertainment; I hate to miss one second of spring. At this rate though, we’re likely to miss great chunks of it and complain bitterly about being gypped come summer’s first heat wave.

Obviously, the best way to slow it down is to get outside and pay attention. We all know this but can’t help being in as much of a rush as spring is. Lucky for us gardeners, our pastime (or vocation as the case may be) gives us a built in brake. There’s weeding to do.

You might not know it to look at my garden but I actually like to weed. Especially this time of year while the soil is soft and I can enjoy the delusion of total eradication. I feel gratified all out of proportion every time I’m able to unzip a whole strip of ground ivy, also known as creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea). Even chickweed pops out almost entirely if I get my hori-hori or fingertips under its tenacious root clump, and wayward sprigs of grass from the lawn are no match for me. Before the garden grows legs, it’s easier than ever to see where we’ve been and reach what still lies in our path.

Inching through the garden on hands and knees also gives us the chance to reacquaint ourselves with it. It doesn’t take many winter months for me to forget what lives in my garden and where. And even now it’s a memory test as perennials’ foliage begins to emerge. Is that an echinacea or a rudbeckia? A phlox, or an aster, or a penstemon? But as we pull weeds from around the crowns of familiar plants, distinguishing characteristics begin to reveal themselves. Echinacea, I suddenly remember, grow from a basal clump of slightly serrated and shiny leaves, paler green than rudbeckia, some cultivars tinged burgundy. Summer phlox’s foliage is smooth on its surface and edges and already arranged around wee stubby stems. It’s even harder to identify seedlings — at least until their true leaves form. And even then proper identification can be tricky without a decent memory of last year’s garden. (This is why we gardeners take so many pictures. They’re not just for bragging.)

Weeding also gives us a bee’s eye view of whatever tiny thing might be flowering at ground level. I’m pleased to report that my garden is not entirely without spring bulbs. Somewhere along the years a couple of colonies of native trout lily (Erythronium americanum), found their way in, no doubt as hitchhikers in gifted perennials, and have been steadily increasing ranks. Over the last few weeks I have enjoyed a time lapse of burgundy mottled leaves poking from the leaf litter, followed by delicate golden flowers that peel wide open on sunny days like tiny bananas.

I also never purchased cobalt-blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) but they’ve seeded themselves around anyway with delightful alacrity. I have to admit though that very little weeding gets done when the honeybees are working those flowers and carrying sacs full of blue pollen back to the hive. (That’s the other reason I carry a camera.)

Of course, by the time you read this, the perennials will have grown taller, and some of the sweetest ephemerals will have gone by as quickly as they came in. But this spring has plenty of bounce yet before summer, so keep your kneepads on. No matter how thorough we are, there will still be weeds to pull and a whole season to watch unfold.

Kristin Green is the interpretive horticulturist at Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum and author of "Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter" (Timber Press). Follow Blithewold’s garden blog at blog.blithewold.org.