Garden Reflections

Hello and ‘long time no see’! I am coming out of my winter cyber-hibernation and thought I would write a post completely unrelated to the current events of today. This post will certainly seem petty compared to what we are all facing these days, but regardless, let’s take a ‘pause’ from the day-to-day and do some reflection instead…

Awakening from slumber! (Photo credit: Josee Duckett)

I was once told by someone abroad that ‘Canadians talk in seasons’. 

I paused to reflect on that statement for a moment and realized it’s truth. I could think of a million ways we (‘we’ being us ‘temperate climate-folk’) refer to the cycles of nature in our every day conversations; often refering to the seasons as a point of reference as opposed to using a month.

“She had knee surgery last fall”

“We have an art exhibition coming up in the spring”

“Come winter I will organize my house” (yeah right.)

For gardeners, this tie to the seasons is especially strong: after all each season has a lengthy task-list of things we should accomplish. With that said we flow through these tasks from spring clean-up to fall close-up in a gardening continuum that is so seamless that we often look back on the growing season and wonder where on earth the time went. 

After gardening in the same location for many years, we become greatly in tune with how our gardens change as our earth makes it’s annual voyage around the sun. In a sense, we become calibrated to our specific areas; we have ‘normal parameters’ mapped out in our minds and we develop an innate sense of how, and generally when, the gardening season will unfold. With this overall picture, we are able to recognize and try to adapt to variations thrown our way by Mother Nature (such as a late season frost, an abnormal amount of rain, unusually cold temperatures, etc.) and we are able to roughly plan out our future seasonal tasks. 

I didn’t quite realize how ‘rooted’ this connection was until I was ‘plopped’ into a different gardening zone/climate and a different landscape. While gardening principles remain the same, I feel not unlike a fish out of water. I am now recalibrating to different timelines, soil conditions, climatic conditions and planting palettes. It is both unnerving and exciting. One can’t be a gardener without having a constant desire to learn, and what a better way to learn than to completely ‘pull the rug out from beneath’ oneself?

My first step is to understand my seasons: how and when they unfold. It is this unknown that is the root of my unease. Would that be because I am “Canadian” and my seasonal reference points have been partially thrown out the window or because I am a displaced gardener lacking a local connection to the fundamental processes that drive the changes in the environment and plants that surround me? Likely a bit of both.

So as the gardens in my ‘native’ area stir from their winter sleep, I look out at my new gardens still tucked-in snugly under their blanket of snow. It is this juxtaposition between my two ‘gardening lives’ that warranted this little pause for reflection...