Weekends seem so narrow to me that, although I truly love my job (and feel my luck for loving it), I still get slightly whiney Sunday evenings about having to get up the next day (already? so soon?!) and go back to work. What can cut my blues off at the knees though is thinking ahead to how I get to spend my Monday mornings. My friends rib me a little about having slight O.C.D. but I say, yeah-who doesn’t? Good news is, I don’t have to do things like spin around 4 times before leaving the house or wash the skin off my hands. But easing into the work week is easier when I get to do one of my very favorite mindless and obsessive tasks first thing. While Monday volunteer, Diane deadheads and de-beetles the Rose Garden, I compulsively de-leaf blackspotty roses and rake up the debris. I don’t know why I have to do it. Operative words here are “have to”. It’s true that removing diseased foliage from the plant (I knock off loose leaves by shaking and wacking the plants) and raking up around the base of the plant is supposed to keep the roses healthier. (Black spot spreads by a rainsplash release of spores). Whether it really slows the fungal spread or not – and it should – the garden just looks better to me when it’s done. So I guess that’s why I have to do it — it’s for my own personal gratification on a Monday morning (the house is closed Mondays and Tuesdays and there are fewer visitors on the grounds so it really is for mostly me!) I’m not alone in having a favorite obsessive garden chore am I? Care to confess a compulsion? What do you “have to” do in your garden?