Our week of 80-degree days has me thinking, perhaps prematurely, of the garden. Part if me is raring to go, to poke seeds into soil and hope for the best, and the more self-preservative part of me is silently begging for another month of rest. I make half-hearted preparations, some lists, soon abandoned.
This winter hasn’t turned out how I planned, with big dreams and spreadsheets of goals and books read by the woodstove and inspiration filed away to use in warmer weather. I was looking forward to a winter of regeneration, but if anything, I am just happy to have survived what’s been a devolving spiral of doubt-tinged panic.
One would think that the longer daylight hours would bring hope—they have in year’s past. But instead it’s brought insomnia and this strange hot weather and mistimed growth is amplifying my worry. Between nightmares I lie awake and even the animals are upset—the hunt club hounds cry through the night, echoing the coyotes on the mountain. The guineas squack at three in the morning and the robin’s incessant songs sound desperately insane.
I wish I could fold the peach flowers back into their buds and slip the daffodil stalks back safe underground. I wish for more time to get my head into the gamespace required to run this place through the summer, and I wish for the ability to enjoy it all.
I wish for the same things — that I could tuck the crocuses back underground and tell the apple trees not to bloom — though not for more time on my behalf. It’s a little early for these things here in the northeast. What will happen to the harvest and the bugs and the birds if plant life goes early this year?