Take Your Mark

   

Here we go again.

    We have successfully negotiated our way through the maze of holidays, blue moons, much too much football and a fortunately truncated Arctic outbreak.  Despite temperatures in the mid-teens for five days, without snow, the garden looks remarkably good with but a few whiskery moments here and there.
    Now an incessant series of warm Pacific storms has turned a  water hose directly on us.  The upside of the perpetual wet is that the temperatures are mild and the garden is well advanced for mid-January.    It is mostly a garden of scent than sight, with witch hazels, Mahonia, Sarcococca, Daphnes and Edgeworthia finding me before I find them.  The first of the snowdrops are with us, the hellebores are showing color and I suspect the first toms will be in blossom this week.
    This is not to suggest that the garden has been groomed.  I remain resolute in procrastinating in that regard for as long as possible.  I like the derelict tangle of the whole as do, it seems, the birds.
    Despite the cold temperatures, the winter vegetables are performing admirably.  I set out Cabbage Coeur de Boeuf, Cauliflower Violetta and Broccoli Romenesco the last week of August and we are enjoying an insanity of freshness in the kitchen.  The first crops of spring greens are up in the greenhouse, while last years chicories and radicchios will remerge to offer salads of note in the coming weeks. Our commitment to meatless Mondays possesses no paucity of inspiration.
    Friends are coming over in two weeks for a potluck seed swap.  (I'll gladly give you two Galeux D Eysines for four  Zucca D'Albenga, pass the chard)  February will begin our seed sowing for the rest of the potager. ( My favorities sources;  Renee's Garden (www.reneesgarden.com), Johnny's Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com), Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) and Seeds from Italy (www.growitalian.com).    
    Ok.   I know many of you have garden dreams still solidly frozen and you probably resent hearing of our own thawing and showing of life.  But within each of our gardens, in every moment of the year, no matter the climate,  there are moments to be gathered and contemplated upon.       
    As Rachel Carson once wrote, "For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind.  One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before?  What if I knew I would never see it again?'
        

Daniel J Hinkley
1/24/10


I reveled in my time in Charleston where I made many new friends, reunited with several past acquaintances and marveled in the history and architecture of the region  (my mid-winter hopes of escaping the Northland for a walk on a sunny Carolina beach were dashed by extremely cold temperatures) Next up; Salt Lake City, Connecticut, West Virginia, Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Lectures at Oxford and Writtle in the U.K. in March.  I hope to see you at one of those venues.