December 22, 2020 message for the new year

 Hi gardeners

We have survived the year; the ones who read this. The natural year has ended and today is the first day of the new year. The calendar year lags of course, man always feels compelled to tame nature in some way, to order it to his thinking. But that is inconsequential in the web of life.

And what a year it has been for gardeners and non-gardeners alike. Maybe some of you had more time for gardening this year, certainly some of you did not have time for gardening. And for those of you who gave up your precious gardening time to heal and care for us, I deeply thank you.

Gardeners experienced scarcity this year, seeds hoarded away, garden stores closed, contact with gardening friends curtailed. But they persevered, as gardeners do. Some had their first garden this year. I hope your experience left you wanting more and ready to tackle a new garden season.

Gardeners are people who hope. To plant a seed or tender plant and trust that it will grow and feed us or give us beauty to contemplate, takes hope. Hope and trust, faith in natures cycles. That the sun rises and sets, and rains come, and things are born and then die.

We lost gardeners this year too, as in every year. But this year the ravages of a disease we can’t control took so many. Many gardeners had their last garden, something they neither planned or expected, and won’t see the gardens bloom in spring. The gardens they tended may languish, the tidying hand stilled, the planter of seeds gone. We mourn. But we hope so we go about preparing for another spring.

It is a new year, a new start. Mourn for what was but prepare for what will come. Plan the garden, hone the tools, buy the seeds. Let the sun climbing in the sky pull your spirit up with it. Persist.

May you have a wonderful new year. My best wishes for the best garden you ever had in the coming year.

 

Sapigloss

 

New garden blogs will be posted beginning in January 2021. I’ll see you then.

 

 

“Now is the time of fresh starts
This is the season that makes everything new.
There is a longstanding rumor that Spring is the time
of renewal, but that's only if you ignore the depressing
clutter and din of the season. All that flowering
and budding and birthing--- the messy youthfulness
of Spring actually verges on squalor. Spring is too busy,
too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh.
For that you need December. You need to have lived
through the mindless biological imperatives of your life (to bud, and flower, and show off) before you can see that a landscape of new fallen snow is THE REAL YOU.
December has the clarity, the simplicity, and the silence you need for the best FRESH START of your life.”

― Vivian Swift, When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put

 

Kim Willis

All parts of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.

 

 

Find Michigan garden events/classes here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118847598146598/

(This is the Lapeer County Gardeners facebook page)

 

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