Transitioning

 

 

                        Under Cover

 

Grumbling about winter seems to be a universal chorus that I have trouble understanding --- until the last two weeks in March, that is; then cold March winds seem to have more bite than a January snowstorm, without the beauty of snowdrifts piled high.

During winter months, when the thought of frozen paint on the palette keeps me indoors, I hunker down in my studio  like a tiny mole snug in his underground burrow.  This is when I paint the quiet colors of winter and indulge in the longer process of painting on canvases too large to drag along on plein air excursions. Come April, however, when the robins start chirping me awake at 6:00 AM and the first green buds appear on lilac bushes, I can’t wait to don my mud boots and join the robins outdoors.

My country neighbors have cut their teeth on  planting trowels, and my friend Don is no exception. He has gardened for most of his seventy plus years, and still cultivates two vegetable gardens, whereas  I muddle around trying this and that, hoping to find my gardening voice. When Don talks about his gardens, my ears perk up and my attention rivets to his words, hoping he’ll drop a few pearls of gardening wisdom.  

The other day he told me he’s testing his pea seeds by sandwiching them between damp paper towels to see which  ones will sprout.  Saves time, he says.

Even though this April has been unusually cold, our conversation spurred me to take a look at my own garden where I found, much to  my delight, new raspberry canes and bright red rhubarb poking up through left over dried leaves.  The garden is not waiting for me and I love that about perennials --- they have an internal clock and know when it’s time to get to work.

And where are my pea seeds?  As an experiment last summer,  I purposefully left some pea pods on the vine to dry in the hot summer sun. Their beautiful pea green color bleached out to an insipid pale beige, and the pods turned tough and leathery; inside the peas shrank and grew hard as tiny marbles. Not convinced they were beyond redemption, I stuffed them in an envelope along with a small prayer for a miracle next spring.