new shoot

Four months ago today, I was putting up my own new shoot, though I didn’t know it at the time.  My very first blog post was here in this space, featuring a sunflower past its prime but yet with a lovely grace, and two paragraphs on a bright green background.  I’ve learned so much since then, about blogging, about gardening, about writing… even about commitment.

“You know, it’s really hard to come up with something to write every single day,” I announced to F. a few days ago.

“I know,” he said, with a little smile.  “Especially if you’re not following current events.”

Well, in a way I was following current events — current events in the kitchen garden, that is — until the changing seasons began to shut down the garden.  Prior to that transition, I can honestly say I wasn’t even keeping current.  It’s easy to find something to write about every single day when something is happening in the garden every single minute.  (And usually more than one thing is happening.)

But about a month ago, I began to feel as if this blog had lost its rudder, as if it were just drifting for a bit, out there on a still and glassy pond.  Just in the last few days, I’ve realized that not only is there nothing wrong with that, but that maybe this stillness, this slow contemplation, this gentle pace is precisely the right way to journal about a sleeping garden.  The garden journal must, after all, reflect first and foremost the spirit of the gardener; right?

And my spirit breathes very slowly at this time of year, urges me to stare out the window or to let the book I’m reading dangle from my unresisting hand while I get lost in a daydream.  My spirit wants to snuggle under a blanket or sip a cup of hot oolong tea in a kitchen that smells of clove-studded oranges and chicken stock simmering on the stove.

I suspect a lot of you (in the Northern Hemisphere and in regions with four distinct seasons) know exactly what I mean.

No matter how slowly I take things, though, no matter how deeply I burrow into my contemplative winter coccoon, my heart still delights to see a new green shoot, and my spirit drags me out to the garden in the howling winds — they literally howled all day yesterday, it was creepy — slipping and sinking down into the cold mud where a small stream recently formed on one of my neglected, leaf-strewn paths, all just to get a closer look.

Who knew even garlic could lift the spirit?

Thank you for stopping by today to see how the new green shoot of this blog fares on its fraction of an anniversary.  I want you to know I do appreciate those of you who come here to take a closer look.  It means so much to me.

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