In our last blog for 2014 you might expect the theme of gratitude: to our clients, our staff, our vendors and our colleagues. But that would be so predictable! (but really, THANK YOU TO ALL!)
Instead I want to talk about the sense of disconnection I feel in winter when I stop working in my garden. Perhaps you feel the same way. It’s like when you pile in your car to leave your childhood home and extended family after a great visit and you face six long hours in the car. Life is on hold during that prolonged drive until you arrive back home again.
Winter is kind of like that car ride for me. A suspended reality that, yes, I dig into and use wisely – but part of me feels on hold, waiting for spring. Cleaning the cobwebs from the ceiling and organizing my recipe binder is satisfying but lacks that active communing feeling I have when puttering in my garden. Me and the cobwebs are not friends and while recipes can feed me, they don’t commune with me.
Sure, I have a lot to look at in my garden out the window being a Conifer Queen, but passively ‘looking’ just doesn’t fulfill the ‘doing’ part of gardening that I love.
While I understand why so many people want ‘no maintenance’ gardens, for me it is the tangible action of plant care that gives me the greatest enjoyment in my own garden. Touching branches, wrestling with a multi-stemmed shrub, setting up my ladder to get to the top of a tree, deadheading, weeding – this is when I feel the comradery with my plants. We are buddies for that period of time and just as you feel closer to a friend after meeting over coffee, I feel closer to each plant.
So as winter sets in and most days I stay indoors, I miss my plant friends. I can watch them from a distance and know they are there – but I already long for spring.
See you all in SPRING 2015!
