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At first glance, with Christmas approaching in southern Louisiana last month, it might not seem like a good time to think about gardening. Arctic storms have dropped mercury temperatures below freezing, making it inconvenient to grow plants outdoors, to say the least.
But with the big holidays upon us, our family finds it hard not to think about plants. After all, many of them spent the holidays with us in close quarters, refugees fleeing the bitter cold. Containers of morning glory gather like carols near the piano, along with spider plants, vines and night-blooming cacti in terracotta pots. I recklessly bought two giant poinsettia plants to decorate the porch, and they ended up in the den too, brushing my legs every time I passed the house. Turning our room into a makeshift greenhouse brings our garden closer to us.
It seemed more fitting, then, that our Christmas Eve gift exchange had a gardening theme. Among other things, I gave my wife a beautiful aluminum watering can and some new gloves, a copper basket for the patio hose and a packet of seeds for blue phlox, which she has in One of my late grandmother’s favorite plants when she was gardening.
I have a lovely birdhouse, and we spent part of Christmas gazing out the dining room window into the chilly backyard, planning where my new treasure might go. Hours of epic cold have turned the land into a living ruin. Our ginger groves are barren brown crusts, and the zinnias are as fragile as tumbleweeds. Our cleome, impatiens and rosemary are all dead too.
Still, it feels good to be standing at the window planning the future. After years of gardening, my back isn’t what it used to be, and I tire more easily when swinging a shovel or hoe. But I take comfort in the idea that age brings a deeper perspective to the gardener. Fortunately, the passing of the years underscores the cycle of things – neither the joy nor the desolation of the garden last forever. Thoughts inevitably turn to what happens next.
We decided to place the new birdhouse in the center of the backyard, near the mock orange bushes we planted last year. I haven’t installed my present yet, but I’m happy to think of it hovering over the garden in spring.
In winter, I also sometimes feel like I’m hovering over the garden too. Freed from the urgency of digging, planting, and weeding that spring brings, I can pause and look at the long term. A few afternoons ago, a seed catalog arrived in my mailbox with a new variety of tomato printed on the cover, the color of a persimmon.
In my home this winter, I did a lot of what most winter gardeners do. I hope.
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