Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. (Macmillan)
I walked in the garden yesterday. The damp cold of an Appalachian mountain winter has settled into a rhythmic freezing and thawing of the earth, so there was a spongy, swampy feel underfoot. Most of the raised beds had been cleared in the fall, and lay brown and bare, but a few dried stalks of tomatoes still hung crazily on their stakes, and tall desiccated cosmos formed eerie sculptures. Everything else, even the perennial herbs, was washed of color except for the green glow of boxwoods, and even they seemed withdrawn somehow, as if their souls were off somewhere far away doing boxwood-y sorts of things . . .
My tidy piece thought of clearing the remainder, while another part of me was kinda awed by these ghosts of a garden past. Oh, yeah, I remember that tomato, an heirloom that gave me only two tomatoes all summer, but those two were absolutely ginormous. And that lavender, wow, it bloomed three times during the summer . . . Maybe worthy of leaving a few more months before clearing, and besides, I’m not too crazy about that swampy ground.
I was especially grateful for fresh garden produce during this pandemic summer, and still feel maybe a little strangely attached to the generosity of a garden that coped with a mega crop of stink bugs and cabbage worms, strange and quixotic weather, sometimes neglect, and lotsa four-footed hungry critters, and still gave me large, even if gnawed-upon, crops. And don’t get me started on how excited I was about all the volunteer flowers —- from what Magic did they come??
A winter walk in the garden, however brief, gave me lotsa gifts yesterday, not the least of which were memories. My mother planted a large garden right up until her death at 87, even as she hobbled about, bracing herself on a wooden tomato stake with which she dug holes in which to drop grains of corn. She said to plant a garden was to plant hope.
I won’t clear it till spring.
