The coffee is delicious and so strong my teeth get involved. So I’m sharing my writing group prompt here, and what I wrote, in ten minutes, because . because.
Tell me about a winter garden.
It feels like the months are unevenly split here, the winter lasts forever and not long enough and then summer rushes by. But i like the winter so much more and so the fall and the buildup to this cold and cozying time is all part and parcel of my favorite. The yard is left undone. I walk about and check on the places where things will grow again. Yesterday i found a cache of chicken eggs in amongst where the daisies grow. It will take a very careful collection, at this point. The shells are bleached white and are sharp against the frozen greens .
The ground is hard, what is noticed is shape and curve, a torment of the branch. Its beautiful, flat out. I wonder if i like this more than i like the chaos of the growth that happens, even though i do love that too. It starts slow but by the end of the season, this yard is completely beyond human interference, and while that is wild and beautiful, it is daunting, and there is no small part of me that feels i’ve failed somehow, in training, in dominating, in being the apex human.
The winter garden, the small strong things that have grown anyway, (how damn strong) that cover the raised bed in humps and bumps of green, despite the freeze. Its all cold, the bones ache, I leave the stalks and dry bits for the insects that hide in there, the winter homes of the bees.
There is no type A in me.
So what? Fear and acknowledgement of the chaos and the tumult to come, and its roots are stark and here, and making up the ground that is so hard. Its not a soft walk, right now, the ground as hard as asphalt, but not smooth, full of whatever makes the millions of pits and valleys. It does bring to mind poetry, it does. There is a great line that called cut corn stalks … sword hilts and it makes a battleground of my yard, those sword hilts all around. Although maybe more an art installation in my case. Laughing. There is so much in this.
The winter garden. What lies beneath… the flip side of the coin, the summer of growth and renewal and the winter of our discontent and burden. – oh my. Not burden but secrecy. Growth in secret.
THERE IS SO MUCH IN HERE THAT I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH. what strikes you, my pretties?
love love,
me
Winter is stark, sharp contrasts and bare bones. You can really see the structure of things and appreciate their form and beauty. Winter is subtle; colors are more suggested than shouted: lavender in clouds and trees, yellows in bark and branches, reds in stems.