Spaces: The Garden

Winter tends to be the least beautiful time in a garden. This is especially hard-hitting for those who garden in the city, like myself. All the dead plant material collected on the ground of a balcony, the overgrown branches of rose bushes snagging at your clothes without the leaves and flowers to conceal them, the pots of plants that got blown over in the wind, the battered flowers and bedraggled leaves weathering the wind, the dark and cold discouraging you from venturing out to tend to your plants…for the past couple months, it feels like the universe had come together to starve me specifically of my passion. The space that was once overflowing with life—plants spilling out of their pots and reaching for the sky, bees buzzing from flower to flower, birds chirping as they poke about, butterflies flitting among their abundant choices—felt suddenly barren, somehow simultaneously too empty and overcrowded with scraggly dead stems in pots at the same time.

Now, I love warm sweaters and cozy warmth indoors as much as the next person, but it was hard not to resent the winter. I felt a fierce longing for the warmer months. My daily ritual of watering the plants when I got home was upended by the way daylight slipped from my fingers as soon as I would cross the doorstep. As I spent so long inside, the helplessness melted into resolve to do something with my garden anyways: planning for the upcoming months. Where will we plant the sunflowers? Where should the roses be pruned so we can maximize blooms? What vines will go on the trellis? What annuals can we experiment with this year? Since the plants had died back, I could more clearly visualize the space I had, which pots were empty, what plants I could fit in. I learned to appreciate winter as the necessary purge of the garden for a new beginning in the coming spring season.

A space changes with the seasons. I learned to welcome every changing moment, the natural passing of time, in my garden and find joy where I thought I couldn’t.