It is mid-February in Vermont. This morning it was nine degrees at my house. On Thursday school was canceled because of snow and ice. Tonight we are expected to receive twenty-eight inches of snow.
I do not do well in winter. My body does not do well in the white or the cold; if I go for a walk longer than ten minutes I get what I call “bone-cold”—a numb chill that I cannot shake for hours, despite baths, hot water bottles, and all the cups of tea. And so I don’t leave the house often in winter; and so I become Vitamin D deficient; and so…you get the idea.
In my dream scenario I would spend these months in Tucson, where my great-grandmother Olive, and grandmother Margaret, spent their winters before me (perhaps bone-cold is in the blood). But my children are still at home; I love them; I want to be near them; and so I stay, here in the house in the woods surrounded by trees; the house in the woods with its woodstove, and tea kettle, and many windows.
It is a beautiful house in which to spend the winter. It is a warm house in which to spend the winter. I try not to complain. I dream of green things.
You were born in spring; your body needs warmth and light and green, my friend who is a naturalist, an amateur astronomer, and an astrologer, once told me, and I believe her.
You were born in spring; your body needs warmth and light and green.
I pull my gardening books off the shelves: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, Vita Sackville-West’s The Garden, Piet Oudolf’s Planting the Natural Garden, books about rewilding and no-till gardening. I read Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time and think how nice it would be to live in England with its ten-month gardening season. I think about the seeds I ordered several months ago, sitting in a dark cool drawer, waiting for me to plant them: amaranth, zinnia, cosmos; beans, peas, kale, herbs. I think about the tulips and daffodils I buried last fall around my yard, and how they will bloom come spring. I count back from my zone’s last frost date and wonder if it’s too early to start any of these seeds: it is.
When I was giving birth to my firstborn, my daughter, my body had the instinct to push for a full hour before my midwives and doctors said it was safe to do so, and so I had to counteract the instincts of my body. I had to not do what it told me to do; I had to stay still when my body wanted to move; and that is how the later parts of winter feel to me. I am a body done with hibernation and stillness; I am a body that does not want to be where the body is; I am a body wanting sunlight and warmth and the wild tendrils of green.
Most years I buy a plane ticket at this point and get myself a respite. Maybe I will again this year, but that is costly, and my work is here, my life is here, and I would like to learn how to find what the body needs within the place where it has landed.
I read my gardening books. I plan a trip to the Smith Botanical Garden. I map out this year’s vegetable garden, think about what fruit tree I will plant this spring (one tree each spring), and commit to buying a load of good compost (good soil: everything).
I look at photos of my garden from last summer and am smitten by how wild and capacious it is, this little patch of rocky and acidic woods I have, bed by bed, year by year, just me and my shovel, turned into a wild and nourishing sanctuary.
These are dark and terrible times—this turning point in our country’s history, this moment of destruction and tyranny—and so I think of all the women, over all of time, who have turned to the garden during times of uncertainty. All the women who have planted fruits and vegetables so that they may feed their children. Planted flowers so that there might be beauty. Made a little place for sitting, so that they might rest, for a moment or two, face lifted towards the sun.
I am that woman, just as, when I was giving birth, I was all women who have ever given birth. I could feel their power surging through me; could feel their resiliency and determination, rooted in strength and love.
These will not be easy times. But they are our times, the ones we have been gifted. I will make the garden amidst them.
R
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I had a little chuckle when I read your line about wanting to live in England where there is 10 months of gardening season. We have more like 10 months of autumn. It rains, it's dark and miserable for so much of the year. The skies from November to March feel so low. I also don't deal well with winter and seem to be permanently cold as soon as October starts. Although the temperatures rarely drop below zero, the constant damp means there is no escape from the cold which chills me down to the bone. But hey, spring is nearly here and I rejoice at the sight of first daffodils and crocuses.
I have found the past few winters to be really hard, which I do think is related to aging—I feel the cold more, and the exhaustion of dealing with it, and we don’t even have much snow, and I don’t have to shovel/drive, but still. I’ve read and re-read Katherine May’s Wintering, which I’m sure you’re familiar with but wanted to mention, as it’s a good perspective on cycles and shifts. Sending sun 🌞 in the meantime!