Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Waiting now on the soil to freeze so I can lay down mulch. One of the odder parts of gardening, putting the blanket on after the bed goes cold. Planting garlic in September is another oddity. Both make sense, but they are counter-intuitive. Mulch over bulbs, especially newly planted bulbs, guards against frost-heaves in the spring, displacing bulbs, throwing them closer to the surface than desired. Garlic, like tulips and crocus and daffodils, needs a cold winter to prepare itself for the spring. They’re both fall planting.
(Anatomy_of_a_Frost_Heave)
Getting the mail from our mailbox out on the road requires dressing up. I put on my down coat for the journey a moment ago. Watch cap and gloves, too. My jeans let the cold right through to my legs, but legs are hardier than feet and torso and hands, more willing to put up with the chill. The top of this head, long a follicle desert, also demands covering. In the summer sun and the winter cold. Burning or freezing.
We look outside at the garden, the orchard, the bees. There is some winter interest there, grasses and flower stems, the bare trees and in our particular case the evergreen cedars, our planted white pines and norway pines, colorado blue spruce, but we admire them from within, no longer carried out among them with trowels and spades. Our work out there is, for the most part, finished until April.
The turn of work goes inward, work we can do at home. Kate will sew, do needlepoint, quilt. We both will read and watch movies. I’ll write, translate, take a class or two.
Waiting also for snow and the transformation of our world. It’s one of the delights of living here.
