The Garden in Winter Light

I took the day off from writing and worked in my garden. Warm as this winter has been, I’ve managed to fit a lot of gardening in so far, which is a good thing, since the place has been neglected for three years. The clay soil has compacted, grass rhizomes have overrun all the old beds, the stepping stones in the paths have shifted under pressure from tree roots and weeds.

I can feel myself settling into a new routine: writing in the morning, working outside for the rest of the day, either here in the old garden or at the new lot where I’ll finally get to grow the roots and the long-season vegetables I haven’t grown at Longlight because of the rocky ground and the impossibility of deer fencing.

The prospect of having such a measured, simple life from here on out doesn’t displease me. I don’t think one needs much more than to write and to move with the seasons as they turn. I can already see Longlight as it will be in weeks, in months, in years—all the years that will go on without me someday. And I can see the lot at the commons, too, surrounded by the dahlias I will grow there, a hedge of memory.

What you plan for in the wintertime comes to be when the days grow longer. And the things the garden has planned all along, while I was away in the manmade world, are coming to be, too. All around me, the daffodils were spiking their way up out of the earth. It would be madness to think we could hold back emergence. What wants to live will live, even if the season is too early for it.

Paul and I watched the sunset over the rooftop. The very edge of a blanket of cloud was above us, the underside glowing carmine, and beyond, the evening sky so brightly and insistently blue it looked like summer.