Wintering

Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with a dream. ~ Josephine Nuese 

My garden is bare and bleak.  I try to incorporate evergreens into all my beds, but I love perennials too much.  This means I end up with sparse beds by late fall and naked and desolate beds all winter.  I love photos of East Coast gardens in the winter.  But they plant many more boxwood hedges and evergreen shrubs, whose structures create silhouettes and definition in the winter garden.  My winter garden looks pretty barren. 

Winter is my design and research time.  I visualize the beds in my mind and make plans to change and fill them.  By late fall we've planted all the bulbs (ordered in August).  But winter is when I order seeds—vegetables, cutting flowers, fillers flowers for beds, and lots and lots of wildflower seeds for the meadow.  We get these scattered as soon as the last predicted frost.  Btw, I don't start seeds in the greenhouse; I buy seeds that can be 'self-sowed'—by humans or natural means (wind, birds, etc.).

As soon as I get the seeds ordered, I begin to peruse the nursery catalogs and the local wholesale nursery availability.  You might think I don't need much, but I'm always adding to what I have to hasten the beds looking lush, and I always have new combinations of plants I want to try.  Each year I think I shouldn't need much and won't need to go to actual nurseries, but I end up going to nurseries all summer long!  And I love it!  

I can't wait for what’s to come.  Once it warms up, I'm out daily watching for bulbs to emerge and seeds to germinate.  And it's never a disappointment.  I get an always-thrilling explosion of color in the spring and a glorious blooming summer. 

But it isn't long before my critical eye starts deciding on moves, changes and what I'll need to buy next year!  That's what makes gardening so enjoyable—it's forever changing and changeable—it evolves with time and imagination.   

 ~ The End ~