Pocket gardens

Last year, after 14 seasons of gardening and heavy yard projects, I stopped dead and let it all fall apart.

This year, I’m coming back at it sideways, returning to a vegetable garden and flower planters, doing more work outside . . . but still limited, doing only what I have to. It’s a by-product of age and fatigue, having less time and inclination.

What’s come of this is a delightful mix of cultivated and wild. The yard is now a potpourri of intention and surprise. When mowing, for instance, I’m concentrating on just the areas of lawn and field we need to use, veering around clusters of wildflowers attractive to bees—especially clover—and unexpected clumps of anything blooming, such as daisies, black-eyed Susans, yarrow, violets, heal-all, dandelions, hawkweed, vervain, wild strawberry, etc., etc.

While this has resulted in areas impassably overgrown with grasses, it has also allowed a low red grass to form a big patch that’s as lovely as an on-purpose planting, especially in the morning when covered with dew in slanted light.

I’m preserving bigger stands of milkweed for the monarch butterflies. And letting things grow up between each other, like daylilies through the middle of a hydrangea, ferns through the strawberries; and weeding with less vigor, so that johnny-jump-ups and cinquefoil and various things I don’t know the name of are flowering between the vegetables.

I’m also taking down a large perennial bed that got choked out with pernicious spreaders—phlox, bee-balm, an unknown sunflower-like thing (coryopsis variant?), evening primrose—plus grass-grass-grass, some nonflowering rampant weed, and horseradish. This brought opportunity to work with friends and neighbors, who came by to augment their own gardens with my cast-offs. While at it, I transplanted some favorites elsewhere in the yard, making them easier to manage (or ignore).

The front steps and terrace, which last year were taken over by daisies and black-eyed Susans, this year have the daisies again but also campanula (bellflower) and a single pink columbine right in the middle of the stoop. Not a black-eyed Susan to be seen. Where did they go?

Oh, over there. And there. Next year, they’ll be somewhere else, and I’ll have to mow a different pattern in the lawn.

The net effect is everywhere I go, everywhere I look, something interesting and pretty is happening in little pockets. I really like the effect and will do it with more focus next year, as the perfect balance between doing too much and too little.

Some like it cold

It’s easy, during spring, to forget the long, cold winter. This past one was particularly miserable, the coldest of my personal experience, though not a record breaker for the region.

The plants haven’t forgotten, though, and some are going out of their way to remind us. But instead of what I expected—missing perennials, damaged shrubs—they are thriving in a manner never before seen.

Apparently some species need a deep-freeze to best recharge themselves; a long, hard freeze, of the type we haven’t seen in many a year. That must be why the lone tulip in my garden, which was there before we arrived fifteen years ago and has faithfully put out one perfect lipstick-red blossom each year, suddenly became two perfect blossoms.

Likewise, my languishing daffodils doubled in size. They didn’t go so far as to double their blossoms, but when they came up this year, several weeks late, there were a heck of a lot more of them. And the lilacs are going nuts!

All the perennials that predate our residency are huge and lush this year: bleeding hearts, bergenia, peonies (not yet in bloom, but some of the smaller ones that held back in the past have sprouted buds); and the undomesticated plants—wild strawberries, heal-all, dandelions, violets—have carpeted the lawns. Lily-of-the-valley has become a plague. And the grass got up to our knees before we had a chance to mow it.

The only casualty I’ve spotted is the rugosa rose. What started as a single plant from the nursery mushroomed over a decade into a hedge the length of a car, taller than a person. But this spring, the entire heart of it is gone, and only the youngest offshoots survive. Drats on that: Not only is the loss disappointing, but those things are evil to prune.

It will be interesting to see how the fruit trees and bushes fare later in the summer, after several years of bumper crops following mild winters. We’re off to an iffy start with vegetables, too. No late frost, thankfully, but it’s been cool and wet for weeks. I think all the grass seed we strewed over a torn-up area has washed away, and the veggie seeds are either waiting for June to germinate or have just rotted in place.

I remain as stymied as before about how our ancestors managed to survive in this climate. If we had to rely on our own crops with a three-month growing season, we would surely starve. It’s too bad that cold-loving ornamental perennials aren’t food producers. Then we’d have something to cheer about during winter’s frigid months.

Winter's back is broken

I grew up hearing this phrase, which always struck me as a tad grotesque but still caught the spirit. By the time March comes around, everyone in the four-season belt is heartily sick of winter and can’t wait until it’s over. This year in particular.

A day always comes, though, when you know the season has turned. It may yet snow and sleet, and linger for days below freezing; but enough daylight is back so that winter’s effects cannot endure.

That day occurred two days ago, when it dawned at seven below zero and by noon had risen fifty (!) degrees to a sunny, sloppy mess. Back down to single digits overnight, bouncing right back up by another forty-plus degrees the next day, to a grayer mess.

We’ve seen this cycle several times over the season, but this time it’s different. In December, January, and February, you know it’s an anomaly, and foul weather will return. It did—with vigor.

But now the “warm” episodes last longer and effect the earth and living things more deeply. Frost has begun to seep out of exposed places, auguring mud season. Certain bird species have already started their mating rituals and territorial songs. Early migrants are passing through. Trees no longer crack like rifle shots in the cold. In fact, the up-down temperature has caused the sugar maples to start running sap.

Critters have emerged: two raccoons, scrounging below the bird feeders; a pair of foxes on their great-circle hunting route where we normally see one. Small rodents leaving prints across a fresh dusting between holes in the snow.

The turkeys are gobbling in the woods, and two males discovered the fallen-seed patch below the bird feeder. That stop has become part of their daily rounds, to the kittens’ astonishment. The cats have been the best indicator of something changing: Previously unwilling to put a paw outside for more than a few seconds, if at all, they are pounding the windows and yowling at the doors to get out, then staying out for hours.

People, too, have begun emerging, especially the sugarers. We’re seeing pickup trucks hauling or trailering sap-collecting tanks, men stomping around in the woods checking lines, roadside collecting stations opened up for servicing. Homeowners appear in their yards with coats unzipped, heads and hands in view, instead of bundled up into invisibility.

Nobody’s kidding themselves: Snow is forecast three times for the next week, with one storm possibly significant. I haven’t forgotten that our biggest dump—five feet in ten days—occurred the last week of March. But then it vaporized in the growing light, allowing spring to arrive more or less on time.

What matters is that the nadir of the season has passed, and it’s a sure bet that within a few weeks we’ll be seeing buds and bulbs breaking through, and the redwing blackbirds will have arrived to scout out this year’s mates and nest sites.

Hitting the winter jackpot

It’s no secret that winter is a trying time for humans, critters, and the land itself. Here in Vermont, winter dominates our lives—and in many cases, provides our livelihoods.

Certain elements can be relied on, year after year: Cold. Snow. Ice. Darkness. Within those parameters, every winter differs in what, how much, and when.

This year, we’ve had the most wintery season of recent times, starting early and promising to run late (though hopefully shorter than the whopper we had a decade ago, with snow on the ground from October into May!). It has presented the gamut of conditions, in rapid succession, hitting extremes. But that includes one of the rare happier moments, which came and went, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day.

It began with a nor’easter that dumped two-plus feet of powder over two days. Yikes! By nightfall the second day, the storm had moved on and clouds parted to present a full moon casting silver glow and sparkle across a flawless blanket of white. Objects on the ground were either buried or simplified into rounded contours. No tracks, no movement; all life in suspension.

By morning much of the landscape would be chewed up by plows and shovels and footprints, and stained by salt and sand. But this night, for a few hours, we had the most beautiful combination of light, shadow, color, and shape that the season can produce.

Calendar-wise, it’s just past the halfway point of the season. The forecast is for another subzero dip followed by days above freezing, beginning the long, sputtering, terminal thaw. So what I witnessed, I think, was the exact moment of the season’s pendulum swing to its farthest point: a pause before the backswing toward spring.

Perfect moonlight-on-snow is Nature’s apology for the suffering she must impose, a reward for her seasonal punishment. Although we may see the combination again before winter ends, it won’t be quite the same.

A piebald Christmas

Our corner of Vermont, like everywhere else, has been riding the weather rollercoaster in recent years, and especially the past two weeks. Here we have a winter theme rather than fire or typhoon.

A week ago Saturday morning, when I went to the dump (excuse me: “transfer station”), it was a balmy 6 degrees. The next night, we got a 15-inch dump of powder snow, onto which was added another 3-4 inches in as many days.

But by the next Saturday morning, my trip to the dump was 40 degrees warmer! And the next day brought the start of rains and unbroken above-freezing temps. (One exception: a morning of light glaze, which was gone by noon.)

Thus, by Christmas eve, a foot and a half of snow had vanished, leaving a landscape of white-splotched gray, brown, black, and mustard, even some spots of green. For days the yard was mucky down to the frost line, until yesterday it froze solid again. The whole reminded me of March.

It’s one thing to lose the snow cover in a week of sunshine and spring-approaching temperatures; quite another to lose it in the darkest week of the year, with calendar winter just beginning.

This was bad news for folks who depend on winter business for their livelihoods: ski areas, snowmobile services, plow operators. It’s good news for the low-budget towns who don’t have to clear and sand. Good news, too, for citizens like us who have to haul firewood across the yard and drive up and down angled driveways, and citizens unlike us who have to commute to work.

The forecast for the holiday was a high of 11, low of -1, and no precipitation for several days. Well, that’s good, I thought sadly, looking at the frigid, piebald landscape; at least people will be able to get around.

Then this morning I woke up to a flawless white vista. Some passing cloud overnight had brought a dusting—light enough for us to sweep off the walkways but heavy enough to coat the world. A white Christmas!

Better yet: Clear skies allowed sunrise almost an hour earlier than all week, with the moon still high in the west. Calm winds, temps several degrees above zero instead of below. Oh, what a wonderful gift!

Thank you, Santa! And happy holidays to all.