A fern lined walk.

     When one begins to write a gardening article, the hardest part is to decide when to start, especially during the winter months in the Pacific Northwest. Everyone looks forward to Christmas and the New Year, but my gardening year begins on the day of the Winter Solstice. This is the longest night of the year, and from that point, the daylight hours slowly begin to get longer and nights become shorter, and spring is marching toward us. Never mind the fact that officially, winter has only just begun, because kinda like my chickens, my spirits begin to rise accordingly along with the length of the daylight.

      Once Christmas is over and the New Year’s festivities wind down, we get out the seed catalogs that have mysteriously multiplied as they piled up on my shelves because I didn’t have time to peruse them. We laboriously drag out our stash of seeds, sitting on the floor, sorting, categorizing them, and in our heads, plan next year’s garden. We also figure out at this time what seeds we actually do need to buy next spring, and discard the fanciful lists that I have already made.  If the weather is favorable, on those rare warm and sunny days, we find the time to get out into the garden and actually DO something after having totally ignored its plaintive cries for help since October, and yes, we have been feeling quite guilty about it.

      One year, days were spent outside, in unseasonably beautiful spat of weather. I had just purchased a new rake. My garden tools have a way of mysteriously breaking in two after a season or two of use, as I have a bad habit of leaving them where I last used them, and we all know what two months of lying out in the rain can do to a tool. Anyway, after grabbing the rake, I headed out into the winter sunshine to rake leaves. Of course, as I raked leaves, as always, Queenie spent the afternoon jumping into each pile, with Dog chasing her, both rolling over in a tumble of leaves and dogs, legs flying, each one emerging with leaves stuck to their backs and heads. During all of this ruckus, I could hear quite clearly the limp, soggy spears of Crocosmia screaming at me to cut them back. The hydrangea needed trimming and supporting, and the whole bank under the road was begging to be cleared of dead flowers and debris. Those chores carried me nicely down to the back 40, where I continued to rake leaves, pull blackberry shoots, and remove debris, between chasing my tools as they were gathered up by sneaky dogs, and after retrieving them and walking back to the task at hand, was able to cut back the Johnson’s blue geranium, stake up the grape vines, cutting them back to a few healthy looking stems, then on to trim back the roses, the shorter the better.

      As I walked back to the main garden, the vegetable beds were pleading for help, tufts of grass and weeds were pulled out, the old bean vines were untangled and pulled down, stakes put away, and half chewed Brussels sprouts were fed to Honey-Bunny, who was another addition to our menagerie. There were originally two rabbits, purchased to turn our vegetable trimmings into rabbit pellets. Rabbit pellets are a very mild form of compost that makes the best fertilizer, and I can tell you, both the raspberries and the dogs love it! But as of now, we only had the one.

      Then the arbor that leads to the vegetable garden clutched frantically at me as I wandered to and fro, and thence I began to chop back the clambering rose tentacles, and trimmed the honeysuckle back to the arbor. Hoping the trimming will encourage it to flower more this year. Of course, when I finally tore myself away, as the sun began to sink into the west, and the light faded from the sky, my body began to shriek and scream, demanding to know what in the heck I thought I was doing to it after sitting around in a rolling office chair for the past two months. I know I won’t be able to move tomorrow, but every minute out of the house, soaking up the winter sunshine; each breath inhaled of our sea soaked air, was manna from heaven, and as I watched the Boston’s happily playing with leaves, sticks and pine cones, scattering them right back around the garden, I knew every second was worth it.

 I’ll hold her down, You get the Tuggy!