I knew it was coming. I knew the warmish days and mild breezes of autumn would soon give way to brutal cold and the inevitable winds. Yesterday I was in a mad rush to get my spring blooming bulbs into the ground. They had traveled all the way from Holland and had arrived only the day before. Somehow, I managed, in spite of my aching back, to plant them all by eleven o’clock in the morning – all 75 of them. I have completed 90% of the remaining gardening chores, like storing the hoses and tucking mulch around the perennials. I have taken time to enjoy the final fleeting days of gardening in the warm sunshine, beneath blue sky and magnificent clouds. The temperature has dropped to only 25℉ from yesterday’s 75℉, ensuring the first snow of the season that is supposed to arrive later today and linger into Saturday.
Knowing that the cold weather was moving quickly towards us, I still resisted. Life is all about change and you would think that I could accept that truth by now. Changes rarely happen slowly, which would allow us time to adjust. They can happen in the blink of an eye and we are seldom prepared. My body must now make the physical adjustment to being perpetually cold and having to wear a minimum of three layers at all times. Soon, we will have to adjust our time back from Daylight Savings Time, which I have never liked.
I must now re-focus. Hopefully, I can fulfill my lifelong dream of having a greenhouse, where I can continue to do what I love regardless of how cold it is outside. With limited space inside, I can grow very little other than salad greens and a few herbs under my small grow light. I can plant amaryllis and paperwhites in pots for indoor bloom, but this is simply not enough to satisfy my need to grow pants. I still lay awake at night, planning landscaping projects that I want to do, but cannot do for at least another seven months. I know that I must accept this involuntary confinement indoors. I must have patience as I wait for the snowdrops and crocus to poke their heads out of the ground. This is the time of year when I wish that I was a bear. I could simply curl up in my den and sleep until spring. I have no choice but to adjust to this sudden change and continue to look for the silver lining in the clouds.
