Anticipation

March is a bastard. He will trick you with sunshine and breezes that sing of summer sunshine. When in reality the night brings in frosts and a reminder that you still live in a Midwestern state. The brown-gray grass, that smells of mud and moving water, changes at a snails pace to gray green to small patches of brilliant emerald. But trees and shrubs still hold on to their winter apparel. I can’t help but feel the heavy anticipation for the appearance of buds on the maple trees or the maroon beginnings of lilac blossoms. Last years perennials lay in winter-worn dried out clumps. The salvia whose rich green and purple flowers are now a mass of gray twigs and dusty leaves. If I was to be having a garden this year there would be plenty of broccoli, tomato, pepper and egg plant seedlings under the light table now. But my parents passion for vegetable gardening is much less than mine, as is many peoples; so the full spectrum lights will not make there debut to my room this year. In stead of the pallets of dirt and seed, all I will have this March is a small container with aconite, just taken out of the simulated winter within the refrigerator. Hope fully by May or June a seedling or two will sprout.

Signs of hope are everywhere. Even though the skies may be clouded over in a steely gray sheet, the powerful sun breaks through in the late afternoons and in the evenings casting a violent band of hot pinks, vibrant yellows, and intense reds across the western horizons. This light brings the end of snow banks and stimulates the growth of the new year to begin. Strawberries poke their three lobbed leaves though the hay layer of last fall. The yarrow and yucca are already bright green. The gray stems of last years flowers towering over head the new growth call me to grab the garden clippers and start the annual perennial trimming. Covering the kitchen scraps in this years’ compost pile goes old growth and a few handfuls of water logged leaves from the ground. The apples that weren’t collected and left to rot on the floor over winter now have rings of mold holding them to the ground. These get chucked down the hill where all undesirable compost goes to decay.

Irises all ready have six inches of green blade like leaves above the ground. Not sure the delphinium and columbine made it though the winter. It’ll be a couple weeks before I will know for sure. I planted both last year. One was bough off a discount table in the back corner of a Home Depot Garden Center. It was 5 dollars and only had a few leaves, reminiscent of grape vine foliage. Of course my ‘Charlie Brown’ complex wouldn’t let me leave the store without some overwhelming sense of guilt, if not passive murder, if I did not give this plant a fighting chance. But now with the return of spring, Jack Frost might have done the job that my neglect could have done 6 months earlier. The words of Barbara Kingslover come to mind with “Hope is a renewable resource”. Of course the frosted mornings and wind swept nights diminish the hope I have for warmer weather. But the days getting brighter and greener everyday, it is a constant refilling of hope for morning glory blooms, sweet corn, savory tomatoes, and drinks around a bon fire with friends and family.