January 1, 2022
I feel a pang of guilt every time I go out to the back yard. There’s always something ugly about it, something ragged, overgrown, in need of tidying. There’s almost always something growing too; the rate at which growing things outpace my available time is part of the problem. There’s always more work to be done than I can do. I will always leave some part of the garden imperfectly tended. It’s the flip side of the eager plant and seed buying I will inevitably do this spring, the flash of life August brings, the frantic harvest, the rush to clean it all up before daylight savings robs me of the chance to work on weekdays, and the inevitable failure, because it is a fraction of everything I’m responsible for, because I struggle to make space for something that is not (if I’m being totally honest) merely a duty.
Left to my instincts, my eyes are drawn to the rough patches, scanning the four compact corners of our tiny yard through the eyes of an imaginary critic: windblown leaves from the fig and maple trees in slimy clumps on the concrete garage roof, backed into the corners of stairs. I never cut down summer’s pepper plants, or the last volunteer tomato against the fence, and on January 1 they are limp sticks, falling against the lackluster supports I put in too late last year. The old raised bed is falling apart, raining good planting dirt onto the garage roof. In the sweaty days of August, it dried out too quickly, killing the new strawberries I put in a few months earlier.
I know I could choose to focus on the growing things, the flashes of beauty in the mess; like all of life, there are plenty. But all that knowledge doesn’t get me there as a default reaction.
It takes conscious, ongoing effort to see instead the glossy rosettes of tatsoi grown as volunteers from the fallen seed of last spring’s planted crop, the determined little strawberries in the ground-level bed defying the drought-flood cycle and sending out runners right and left. Pausing to see, and more specifically, to see, and rejoice in, beauty, is a discipline.
January 2, 2022
It is supposed to snow tonight, an actual winter storm, with one child’s morning medical appointment already postponed due to “inclement” weather. (Does anyone use “inclement” for anything other than snow cancellations?) I have been meaning to scatter some poppy seeds in some of the more bare patches of dirt out front. With snow coming, I figure this is it. So, kids in bed, darkness fallen over the quiet neighborhood on the cusp of returning to real life after two weeks of holidays, before we head upstairs to fold laundry, I sneak outside with an envelope of mixed poppy seeds I made last year, gathered from a dozen packets I purchased oh-so-hopefully from those glorious seed catalogs. I don’t know if more than a few of my seeds ever germinated last year. I had two definite poppy plants, and none of the stunning violet gray or full peony-like blossoms that had turned my head when I was ordering. Since then, I’ve read about sowing poppy seeds ad nauseum and everything says the same thing: toss them on bare dirt.
“Poppies germinate best with some light so do not bury the seeds.” says Eden Brothers, purveyor of one of said glorious catalogs. BBC Gardner’s World adds helpfully, “Poppies should be sown direct on to well-prepared soil. … Water the soil with a fine spray of water and then scatter the seed. There’s no need to cover it.” Burpee’s, responsible for yet another wave of catalogs, informs more helpfully still: “To sow directly into the garden, prepare the area where you want your seeds to grow by raking the area smooth and removing any rocks. In fall, after the soil has cooled down, sprinkle the seeds on the ground. Cover lightly and mark the area. When the snow melts and the ground is warmed by a spring sun, the seeds germinate and start to grow.”
That’s the plan, anyway. No rocks, cool soil, seeds strewn about, and BOOM, magic! Flowers, for years to come. But no one answers my pressing questions: what about seeds that fall on leaves? Or get covered by leaves after the fact? What keeps the seeds safe? How do you keep them from being stomped on by stray children, gobbled up by birds or swept aside by rooting squirrels? How do any of them make it through the many apparent hazards of my tiny urban garden and actually turn into plants? And how does mulch play into this? Poppy seeds apparently can’t be buried or they won’t germinate. but neither are you supposed to leave a patch of dirt bare. Nature abhors a patch of bare dirt! All my attempts at poppy sowing research have yielded no actionable insights to the mulch paradox. Given last year’s low success rate, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the little pinches of seeds I toss across several of the bare-er parts of the front yard. Honestly, I mostly doubt any will grow. But next to my doubt is the faintest of hope that maybe a few will, and it is just enough to make me run out after dark and scatter some seeds.
January 3, 2022
Snow’s come. Our first major storm in a few years. I feel a sigh of relief, like a new year starting: whatever was undone in the garden, it is too late now. All those ragged bits are covered with a gorgeous fluff that will eventually condense to a frozen patina. But either way, there’s nothing left to be done. The summer plants I hadn’t cleaned up yet are buried. The potted herbs that didn’t get enough water during the long warm fall and were teetering toward death by dehydration will probably freeze now anyway, necessitating a new round of buying 3-for-$10 in the heady days of the spring farmers market. All my successes and mistakes out there feel like they’ve been leveled out, a wash in this 8 inch blanket of snow.
Snow and January are both a useful way of putting the past behind you; so what if you ate or drank too much at a dozen holiday gatherings? So what if last year’s fresh habits wore off faster than you’d hoped? The calendar has turned and a new accounting begins. It is a fiction in both directions, of course: the consequences of our choices don’t stop at a turn of a calendar page, and no such turn is necessary to start trudging slowly in a new direction. But it is a useful fiction, so we collectively lean into it, with all our human hopes for things to be made new.
Not that I couldn’t find a chore to do if I set my mind on it. The snow will need to be shoveled, there will be dinner to make, and a task list days long when I crack open that door. But there’s this precious tiny segment of day right now when nothing absolutely needs me, and I’m trying to choose to take the space when it comes – to make the space – to rest. Not as a reward for the work well done, but as a thing of beauty and joy in its own right, as worthy of my time as the food project or kid activity I could easily fill this hour with.
I don’t think this hasn’t always been true, but in this stage of life, it no longer comes naturally to pursue joy, at least joy that can’t be funneled through a productive filter. Probably my past self found more unhealthy significance in being interesting, so growth was choosing commitment and stability. But now that I’m fully committed, growth looks different, like resisting finding unhealthy significance in what I accomplish. Two sides of the same lie that we are what we do. So in rebellion, this year I’m trying to make a habit of joy. And what is joyful now is sipping my perfectly hot coffee, savoring the silence of a baby asleep and a cat curled up at my side, and staring out at the snow covered branch of the crepe myrtle framed by the parlor window. Last year’s pruning is an obvious break: a solitary sturdy branch until it comes to a point where – poof! – it sparks outward in twenty spindly directions, glistening like a frozen firecracker.
The difference between snow and January is that the new year’s resolutions are all about a fresh round of effort applied to polish off our frailties and foibles. I’m intimately familiar with this effort, having spent much of my 40 years wrangling myself in annual themes, long-term goals, and improved habits toward what I understand to be the best version of myself. But this fresh snow that covers all manner of wrongs isn’t about my effort. Snow falls of its own accord. Despite our neighbor’s advice to my five year old the night before the storm: “wear your pajamas inside out, that will make it snow!” No, you don’t work for it. From this cozy perch, you just relish the gift of the clean slate it offers. No ugly backyard, no pressing chores. Just slow, still practicing making a habit of joy. Snow, like grace, making all things new.
