A Secret and Inward Working of Powers

"Winter should not be considered as only negation and destruction. It is a secret and inward working of powers, which in spring will burst into visible activity"

--Henry James Slack

It's January in Iowa, pandemic month 4,682. We're indoors and home-bound, more or less, both by the normal cycle of the seasons, and by an uber-virus. 

This does not sound at all like a "secret and inward working of powers." It sounds like drafty upstairs bedrooms in an old house. It sounds like being sick of cooking every. damn. meal. It sounds like I haven't had a beer at the taproom with my coven in forever. It sounds like a barely stifled whimper. 

January, thankfully, is also when the seed catalogs come, and with them, the power to imagine the Garden that Might Be. 

 

There is a lot of daydreamy goodness to that when the only thing keeping my fingers warm is a mug of tea, and it is still a long time (in pandemic months or normal ones, for that matter) until spring.  

I know that I am at my most perfect self as a gardener in January, when all things seem possible, and the pages of the catalogs are full of bright vegetables and soft blossoms. Seed and plant catalogs are the storybook version of real gardening, a storybook that I am all too willing to read, over and over again, like a young child. What happens between April and September is sweatier, buggier, full of earthy delights (I can literally stop and smell the roses) and equally earthy disappointments (just what the hell ate my collard greens?)

I like to consider myself a gardener. A planty person. Herbal witch. Urban farmer. Green thumb. Horticulture geek. But I am not convinced that I am or can become a gardener in any fully adult way. I can't have some sophisticated color scheme, because I want to use all the crayons in the box, from burgundy black dahlias to snow white daffodils. My perennial garden is organized much like my mind's thoughts, with a random assortment of plants crowding the borders. What may have started out with a plan slipped out of bounds as my interests grew this way and that, and so did the bee balm and black-eyed susan, all over the place. And while I came for the flowers, I stay to feel the dirt in my fists, nudge a strange bug along a leaf, and stand still watching, while a possum toodles along the back fence line at dusk. If I were without neighbors, I might make mud pies and sour smelling mashes of dandelion petals and water as I did when I was five. I'm a little less tame in my garden. I like it that way. 

While I have no interest in the perfection of award-winning landscape design or neatly trimmed lawns, I still want to be better at growing things. Better at nurturing green life. Better at raising my own food. Better at taking care of the small patch of Mother Nature under my stewardship. 

That part of January garden planning requires putting down the pretty storybooks, and engaging in honest reflection on my past history. (Are you listening, America?) Not just the successes, but also the total failures, and everything in between. It's where reality and daydreaming meet, and it is the fertile ground where a future garden begins to take shape, the one that with any luck I'll get to tread with dirty bare feet come June. 

Last summer, I grew beautiful little red peppers. We stuffed them with chives and cream cheese, and roasted them. It was my first real success growing peppers from seed for this garden, and I am proud of that accomplishment. It took some research into the best varieties for our region and a heat mat for seed starting, but I learned better ways to grow a healthy food I wanted to eat. 

I grew gorgeous dahlias like this one, a variety called David Howard. But that is only half the goal in tending these half-hardy perennials in a cold winter state like Iowa. They require their tubers to be dug up and stored inside for the winter. The last two winters, I've killed the tubers-- once by keeping them too dry, and another time by keeping them so moist they rotted. This year they are stored in the basement trying yet a third storage method. I may be too stubborn, but I am awfully fond of these lush sunset blooms. 

Sometimes I am a good or terrible gardener on what seems like a purely accidental basis. I discovered I am good at growing geraniums, or pelargoniums. The photo below is Lady Plymouth, a scented leaf variety. I give them a sunny window or a spot under the grow light indoors during the winter and water them once a week. In summer I toss them outside into the patio boxes, where except for regular watering and some occasional feeding, they go do their thing without a whole lot of angst on my part. I've been told they're not for amateurs. And yet here I am, with a growing collection of them.

I am accidentally terrible at growing alocasias, a beautiful tropical houseplant with what appears to be a lengthy list of finicky demands that must be met in order for them to flourish. I've read up. I've searched the internet. I've watered them more. I've watered them less. I've watered them more, but less frequently; and watered them less, but more frequently. I've watered them from below. I've watered them from above. I've misted them. I've kept their leaves clean. I've watered them with distilled water. I've watered them with room temperature water. I've inched them closer to the window. I've inched them further away from the window. I've praised them, named them, petted them, begged and pleaded with them, prayed for their little planty souls. They all come home, put out a few new leaves just to make me think I've got them figured out...and then slide into a slow death spiral I can't seem to pull them out of. It's maddening. 

 

I sometimes keep the dead bodies around to torture myself about the money I've wasted watching these things die on me. 

Here's what they're supposed to look like, from the florist at my grocery store. I didn't bring this one home, because I'm beginning to feel like a serial murderer. I am bad news for you, plant babe. 

Last summer I also managed to grow slimy, inedible cauliflower, overcrowd my entire vegetable garden to the point that it underproduced, and kill a rather expensive flowering mandevilla vine. We also decided we missed green beans, which we did not grow last summer, and can cut back on tomatoes, which we love, but that we are almost too good at growing. 

By Jan. 19, when my local greenhouse opens and I can go buy this year's supply of seed starting soil, I will have spent hours with the storybook side of this exercise as well as the honest assessment part, along with seed inventory, list making, sketching on paper, and making decisions half-driven by the cook that is me (leeks! squash! tarragon!) and also by that inner five-year-old (cool rocks! snapdragons! marigolds as big as your head!)

Garden, I'll be ready for you when you wake up. 

Things I'm doing right now: 

Reading a history book: 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry, by Andrew Bridgeford

Enjoying a Facebook page where you can all-caps vent your spleen on its "Shouty Thursdays": Tales of a Kitchen Witch

Making calendula salve from Homestead and Chill