I stepped outside this morning to check on my garden, which is a bit like checking on a crime scene. Everything is dead, brown or has the structural integrity of a wet napkin. But I’m an optimist, so I brought my coffee.
My raised beds have transformed into what I can only describe as “nature’s compost pile without my permission.” That beautiful arugula bed? Now it’s a salad that pre-wilted itself. The marigolds I planted to look cheerful? They look like they’ve seen things. Dark things. My cats think I have installed these state-of-the-art litter boxes. (Gross, I know.)
To be honest, walking outside this morning, I found it oddly peaceful. There’s no pretending. In summer, you can walk past a struggling plant and think, “Maybe it’s just having a bad week.” In winter, that plant is a brown stick. They call it dormant, and it can’t be hidden.
I found my garden gnome triplets this morning. They had fallen face-first into a pile of leaves. I think they were just as surprised as I was that the winter garden looked like it did. I propped them back up, thinking that little gesture would change the vibe. Hope springs eternal, right?
The birds feel a bit shortchanged as well. They keep landing in the garden, looking around like they’ve shown up to a party on the wrong day. “Wasn’t there … didn’t there used to be … seeds or something?” Yes, little guy. There were. There were a lot of things.
I’ve started referring to my winter garden as “down for a winter’s nap,” which is my coping mechanism until spring. Dormant is just a gardening word that means “dead but we’re being polite about it.” After all, my sleeping garden is still doing it’s thing for bugs, pollinators and the like to protect them from the cold.
Because that’s the thing about gardening in winter. It’s not really about what’s growing now. It’s about standing in your barren plot, drinking lukewarm coffee and believing against all visual evidence that, in a few months, this will somehow be different.
So for anyone that comes to my garden, it’s sleeping. No more explanation. Deep, deep sleeping. Possibly comatose, but sleeping nonetheless. Just like Sleeping Beauty.
And I’ll be here, checking on it, coffee in hand, waiting for the first bud to pop.
Spring can’t come soon enough. 56 days. And yes, I am counting.
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