Tender shoots help shake winter gloom
The last nine months in the experimental garden have been tough. Squirrels poached and bit — but did not consume — the most beautiful of the heirloom tomatoes of fall. The potato archipelago got out of control and then was forgotten until the plants fell to frost and the tubers retrenched to begin planning their beautiful, if random, reemergence. Replacement hens have been as slow to begin giving eggs. And the massive bee swarm captured for me this time last spring has disappeared, leaving behind massive stores of honey that should have sustained them through the parched, whiplash winter.
It would be easy to hang on to the gloom if not for the hints of green pushing up through deep mulch holding in what precious moisture has fallen these past few weeks. It was painful, of course, to wake Thursday morning to clusters of grape hyacinth encased in ice and the earliest tulips and daffodils dragged to the ground by snow before they could be cut for an Easter bouquet.
It’s conundrum of life and weather and the garden. We hoe and we hope, our planter’s dreams dashed by too much rain or too little, a late frost or row covers blown to Kansas. But like the potatoes and knobs of garlic tucked in and protected by a heavy blanket of straw and leaves, we gardeners have stored power just waiting to be freed by the warming soil.
For now, we’ll have to make do with thumbing through the garden catalogs and pressing little seeds into tiny peat pots, tending to the potential of the coming season of color and fragrance and food with heat and light and love.