We’re all tired of the cold. Of that I am quite sure, and
what we all need is to jump into spring with it’s glorious promise of color and
the promise of renewal. But when the temperature at night still demands being
bundled up in layers it’s hard to think about going out and digging in the
soil. I want to go out and start cleaning, or planting, or weeding or pruning,
but the soil is reluctant to let me in.
My advice, get yourself some poppy seeds.
Poppies like to be
sown in the cold, the trick is how to sown them and then not disturb them when
you want to clean your beds. My solution this year is to find small spaces
where the sun has tempted the soil into subtle spots of thaw and the go in and
remove the fallen matted down leaves by hand, to gently uncover spaces between
the snowdrops (in April, it’s so strange I know) and make patches for my
poppies to live. I’ve done early spring sowing of poppies before, but
invariably the seeds I’ve tossed the early each year have been sacrificed to
the gods of garden bed cleanliness and have not had a chance to grow. So this year I’m changing my ways. I
didn’t do a vigorous cleaning in the fall, so the leaves and debris is greater
than it used to be, but I’m trying to be more gentle. I’m trying to be okay
with letting nature take it’s own course.
So instead of inviting the blowers and the rough raking,
this year, I’m approaching the garden on my hands and knees. When I’m down
there, closer to the beginnings of the season, I’m more aware of what’s
happening. I notice the tiny new promise of hellebore growth. As I cut off the
dead leaves and gather them with gloved fingers instead of a rake I can really
see what needs attention and what doesn’t. I can see there’s a lot of dead in
the roses, I can see that the hydrangea buds are brown and desiccated. And yet
my hands are slow to pull out the clippers. I am waiting for the plants to tell
me what they want and when they need me, I’m letting the garden dictate it’s
timing this year, not my own desires. It’s cold down in the dirt, and wet, but I drag a piece of
tarp with me (or sometimes when I’m feeling lazy a Citerella bag) and pull on
long, tight warm garden gloves. I persevere.
I’ve scattered seeds along the vegetable garden fence where
tulip tips have been revealed by my fingers’ slow methodical tickling. It’s
taking much longer than it normally does and it would be easier for me to see
it as my not getting a lot accomplished each day I as I survey my progress, but
I’m choosing to see it as a more caring, softer approach to an entity that’s
had it even rougher this winter than those off us that had the choice to come
in from the cold and wrap ourselves in blankets. More poppies went under the
pear tree which looks bare and exposed at a glance but which will be lush and
full and billowing soon.
That the garden is not on my schedule -- that it doesn’t
want to wake up yet is understandable. If I can respect it, if I can follow its
lead I know I will be rewarded later. It’s not the way I normally approach the
yard. I tend to want to go through like a dervish and remove debris in a mad
frenzy of spring-cleaning, but this slow picking away of detritus is a
revelation of sorts. I see lots of
dead that needs to be removed but there’s also signs of life.
Unfortunately, my bees seem to have not survived the winter.
And I’m sure there’s going to be more damage revealed as the temperature warms
and the plants start to push, but today I mourned my bees. Having bees is
actually a little harder than I thought it would be, and the silence of my
garden without them is strange. I’ve gotten so used to them filling the witch
hazel with activity, but the orange and yellow and rust flowers are silently
gorgeous. To actually have an Arnold Promise witch hazel and snowdrops blooming
in April is crazy, but it is the stirring of change. I’ve promised to get new bees and to try again, to not be
disappointed but instead to look forward. That I’m used to having my hamamalis
colors and the promise of a new beginning in February and that I’ve had to wait
until Easter has been hard, but it is now happening. I can see from my kneeling
perspective that the soil has softened. My parsnip I was planning on enjoying
throughout the winter months are revealed now that the last of the snow has
finally been pushed back by the sun. The earth releases them to me and I am
overjoyed by the sweetness sleeping through this long cold has gifted to them.
I heard the other day that the Inuits have looked up at the
sky and noticed the sun is rising in a different place, that their days are
shorter and that they feel the earth has tilted on it’s axis. That we, as a
planet, are literally off balance. I think they are right. I know I have been
off balance, treating the garden as something that is mine to force and shape
and change instead of seeing it as it is, something to be watched and learned
from, something that I can help instead of something I can force. And this has
been a lesson for me.
I don’t know if my fig has survived yet, but my quince is
full of buds. I’m certain none of the artichokes I was hoping would winter over
made it, but the snow provided much needed water for trees that were still
stressed from Sandy two years ago. The forsythia hasn’t cracked yet but the
cornus mas has and I see tiny slices of its yellow promise within the eyelid
opening of its buds. What’s crazy is that it appears that some of my tulips
from last spring are still with us although the last few struggling
rhododendrons have given up. I am not giving up. And this year, I’m also not
pushing it. People keep asking me what they can put outside, telling me they
need color, they need to plants something. I offer them fistfuls of pansies,
fill their arms with ranunculus and show them the hellebores that are inured to
the cold nights. I tell them that
peas want to be planted now, as do beets and carrots and kale. I show them onion sets, and yes I hand
them some poppy seeds and a pair of gloves and suggest that they might possibly
want to invest in kneepads.
Paige Patterson has 12 baby hellebores sitting in her living
room tonight after drinking in the sun on her kitchen porch all day as she
tries to ready them to venture out into the cold.
