It’s finally snowing. Now I can have some sense of closure that it’s winter rather than just an ill-defined muddy season following fall. I really need winter closure in the garden this year. I need that peace when the garden is cut to the ground, all neat and tidy, and needs nothing from me. And now it’s freshly mulched with snow.

And I find myself thinking of it as “the” garden instead of as “my” garden, as if to further disassociate from it. Maybe that’s just a winter thing, or maybe I simply don’t have it in me this spring to pick up the shovel and make my annual vow that this will be the year I finally finish the garden to my satisfaction so I don’t long for the escape of winter.

Maybe all of that gardening time and effort would be better spent on other pursuits. I could read so many more books. Or learn to take better photos. Or volunteer with rescue dogs. Or become a ballerina or a cowboy. Or just sit on the back porch and truly relax instead of pretending to relax while scrutinizing the back flowerbed that’s run rampant with Obedient Plant so I don’t have to decide what else to put there.

I’m sure I won’t feel this way once spring is in the air and the sun slants across my veggie beds again. But for now, I need some winter closure.

Per usual on July 5 (okay, July 4 this year), summer finally kicked in here in Seattle and I’ve been gorging on sunny days and 80-degree temps and sugar snap peas from the garden and “June” strawberries from the U-pick field. What utter decadence to eat strawberries that are juicy and red inside and require no sugar. Mr. Sorry and I polished off half a flat of them over the long weekend. I’m thinking maybe I’ll pick up another half flat and try my hand at freezer jam. I wonder how much Sure-Jell you need to preserve summer?

Just in time for the first day of spring, my crocus finally dug their way back from China after being planted too deeply. Notice the strategic use of passive voice there, as if I simply have no idea WHO planted them too deeply.

Yesterday was so gloriously sunny that I peeled down to my sleeveless t-shirt for a while—mostly, I think, just to remember what it feels like to have my arms bare outdoors. Then I celebrated with my first yard mowing of the year, after resuscitating the green mower with a couple of hours on the battery charger. And for dinner we had our first spring greens from my overwintered 4×8′ salad bowl, even though nothing is labeled and I’m not sure exactly what we ate. What a relief to be done with grocery store lettuce until next winter.

And I’m currently 180 screws, two pea trellis redesigns, one blister, and a cut finger into building my new raised veggie beds. More on that project soon.

Happy Spring!

That pretty much sums up late January: somewhere between a rock and a hard place. With my good elbow, I’ve been slowly deadheading the hydrangeas and cutting back the plants that have withered beyond winter interest. But, so far, this gardening year has been more “out with the old” than “in with the new.”

With no snow to blanket the muck or amplify the waning winter light, every day just “is.” The hellebores are still furled tight. The ivory spikes of reticulated iris and crocus glow in the gloom but won’t bloom for another few weeks.

And then I find these daffodils sprouting through the rocks, with sheer determination to persevere. They always find their way, even between a rock and a hard place. And someday soon they’ll be in cheerful bloom.

Ah, January. The month for cleaning out my closet. I’m a purger by nature. The less extraneous stuff in my life, the better. So you’d think it would be easy to deadhead my closet. But not so much.

No more turtlenecks

I go into it all gung-ho with firm resolutions about what I’m going to pitch. The first rounds are easy, nearly vehement. First up are the turtlenecks. Gone. All of them—especially the red turtleneck from that horrible Christmas photo. No more red turtlenecks.

Then I’m getting rid of that orange blouse that apparently I’ve worn every Thanksgiving since they invented the camera. Every year I spill gravy on the front and think, “Well, time for this to go to Goodwill after I wash it up.” And then the gravy spot washes out and, lo and behold, what do I wear the next Thanksgiving? But not next year. In the bag it goes.

After that, the closet deadheading gets a little tougher. Things that I should pitch in the interest of good taste, I convince myself I’ll wear while I’m working in the garden. Because that sequined New Year’s Eve jacket will look splendid while spreading compost.

Then there are the old friends, like my puffy boucle hoodies (okay, I call them my snugglebunnies). They’re so long out of fashion that it’s a faux pas to wear them even to the mailbox, but they’re so warm and comforting that I’m keeping them through the winter, just in case I catch a cold.

And then there’s my cheap cashmere sweater that’s so soft and exactly the right shade of lavender. I’ve made so many good memories in it through the years that I probably can’t ever get rid of it, even though it’s missing buttons and pilled and saggy and has a few holes. But nothing I can’t overlook for another few years.

I’ll remember you fondly.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. May your watering can be filled with love, hope, and merriment.

Good golly, December is a busy month! I don’t even have kids (or a paying job, come to think of it) and yet I’ve still been running purely on caffeine and Christmas ToDo lists.

I’d hoped to finally sit back and relax, now that the tree and decorations are up, and the shopping is done, and the gifts are wrapped, and the Christmas toffee is made, and the boxes are shipped off to our families in the Midwest, and the cards are written and mailed, and I’ve finally procured a much-sought-after duck for our traditional Christmas dinner.

But this morning, I found myself making a different kind of list: the things I need to be sure I’ve done this season in order to “enjoy” Christmas. You know, the simple things, like have a peppermint latte—which I still haven’t done. But I’ve made great headway on the rest of the list.

For example, I got the jump on enjoying Bailey’s in my coffee first-thing on Thanksgiving morning while I was making the stuffing (way before it was 5 o’clock anywhere). And I’ve enjoyed fully a quart of eggnog at this point, although without alcohol because I prefer it straight … the eggnog, that is.

And I’ve now listened to enough Bing, Burl, Nat, Dean, Frank, Elvis, and Johnny to yuletide me over until next year, so we may be headbanging some Clutch while we open gifts Christmas morning.

And Mr. Sorry and I have already enjoyed our three favorite Christmas movies. And, after dinner the other night, we took the long way home and enjoyed the dazzling neighborhood light displays, while wishing once again that we had electrical plugs in our soffits instead of unfinished holes where swallows and yellow jackets nest.

And, loving peppermint as I do, I’ve enjoyed both some peppermint bark and not one, but two candy canes—full-size, not miniature—although not the Big Bob’s gigantic ones as large as a rolling pin that I used to enjoy when I was a kid.

And, since I missed my trip home, Grandma shipped me the peanut butter/chocolate kiss cookies she made me, so I got to enjoy those, although not in her kitchen. And I have also enjoyed my annual chocolate-covered cherry—just one, in remembrance of Grandpa.

And, even though I would deny it to Mr. Sorry, I confess that I have enjoyed MORE than my half of the tub of scatter mix (some of you know it as Chex mix) that Ma Bell lovingly makes and sends every year. If you want to up the ante on your recipe so you’re as fat and happy as me, add some bacon grease to the butter, like Ma Bell does. Mmm.

And to help myself find the gumption to sit down and write a blog post, I am presently enjoying some Andes mints with my very large cup of very caffeinated coffee.

No wonder I’m plum tuckered out after all of that Christmas enjoying. Tomorrow I think I’ll pull on some sweat pants, roll myself out to the car, and get that peppermint latte after I pick up the duck.

Although it doesn’t say so on the calendar, today had that nagging feeling of being the last day of summer in the Pacific Northwest. Tomorrow the temps drop into the 60s and it begins raining—and this time of year in these parts, the gloom may just settle in for winter.

So Mr. Sorry and I lived the day. I wore my favorite shorts and sleeveless shirt, probably for the last time this year, and we relaxed in the chaise lounges soaking up the last of the sun, reading, and napping.

As the afternoon swooned into a warm summer evening—my favorite time of a summer day—we opened a chilled bottle of white wine that had somehow survived the summer in the fridge unnoticed, then grilled some steaks and wallowed in scoops of chocolate and raspberry sorbet.

It was a great last day of summer—mostly because we grabbed onto it and lived it, as if it might be the last. I wonder why we don’t do that every day?

I hate it when bloggers I follow just up and stop posting. It leaves a little hole in my life where the narrative of their life belongs.

And when you write a blog, you naturally hold the narrative of it in your head—what you’ve said, what you want to say. So if you don’t say anything for a while, sometimes it’s hard to find your voice again.

Lately, I’ve thought a lot about the narrative of my blog. Even though I’ve been posting sporadically, I haven’t really said anything for a long time—pretty much since back when I quit using words.

Words and I had a little tussle this winter, and they hightailed it the hell out of Dodge for a while. Since words have always been my friends, I pretended that my feelings weren’t hurt and played with the new kid in town, the camera. And I painted the kitchen. I painted the kitchen a few times.

But, eventually, the words missed me as much as I missed them and they finally began slinking back, tail between legs. I lovingly pat each one on the head as they straggle in, so they don’t go away again.

The funny thing is, even without words, I still talked to you in my head. Yeah, I know it’s really just me talking to myself, but now I think of it as talking to you.

So, as spring awakens, The Sorry Gardener is crawling out of bed, too. No more Snooze button. There may not be an abundance of words in every post, since we’re still patching things up. But in a pinch, I have all of those garden photos piling up—and they say something too, in their own wordless way.

See you soon.

In the meantime, check out the other Awakening photos at Gardening Gone Wild.