November 27

There are times of year that afford some breathing space.  Thanksgiving in the United States is one of them, in the southern hemisphere, around Easter.  Both are holidays for the people who get to take them, but if your year falls a little differently, take advantage of these spaces.  In the United States, Thanksgiving Weekend includes Black Friday, which heralds the moment when shops can morph their Black Friday week into Christmas Shopping!!!  Inboxes are filled with spam, each sales email more breathy than the next. Gardeners are not immune, and it can be a good time to pick up and end of season plant that would have cost triple the amount in the spring or summer.  These breathing spaces are the times of year when the garden has gone largely quiet as frosts have taken their toll and vegetable patches mainly comprise winter hardy greens or garlic and onion snuggling down into their beds to overwinter. 

Dazed by too much turkey, gardeners can slump on the couch and pull up a few of this year's garden catalogues and engage in a bit of planning.  Tomatoes didn't do so well this year?  There are a dozen varieties that might do better next year.  Armed with a marker you can circle plants with abandon.  Going online somehow doesn't elicit the same kind of excitement as looking at vibrant pictures of plants in their prime while the yard outside is looking wintry.  Gardens have the ability to ground us both in reality as well as hope. Today we weed, while tomorrow we imagine the hedge full grown.  Learning how to translate that continuity from the garden to other areas of our lives isn't always easy. For many, making ends meet can obscure the possibilities of a tomorrow in which hopes have been realised. But in the same way an empty space is transformed by the conscious planting of trees and hedges - small cuttings today - into a shady, vibrant garden 20 years hence; so too, being dogged about planting, pruning, weeding and watering can result in a space transformed.  It is difficult to do and requires a single-minded hewing to a vision when the next, new shiny thing is in our inbox shouting that it's 70% off for the next two days. Our time and space is better served by taking time away from our electronic devices and sitting in the garden, watching the birds search for bugs in the lawn while bees buzz from flower to flower.  Or choosing from the catalogue while sleepy from too much turkey those items for the spring that will support beneficial nsect populations and pollinators in a world with a changing climate. In time, the hedge will grow, even if our day to day lives may be a grind.  And it will provide beauty to otherwise challenging lives.