Welcome snow!

The first real snow of the year is here and everything is covered with its white, forgiving blanket. The world looks clean and fresh and no one can see I forgot to take in my tools his fall either, not even me. In fact, I can’t even find them.

One of the disadvantages with being an optimistic gardener with a lot of ideas, ability for starting projects and a lack of ability to finish them is that you spend ridiculous amounts of time looking for your tools. They are where I got the last idea. Unfortunately, I can’t always remember where that was.

This is how it works. I come home from somewhere, see a flower that I haven’t seen before and of course I have to go looking at it. After having made the flowers acquaintance I see some weed that needs to be removed. The now gone weed reveals a need for mulch – of to the compost to get some nice material. On my way back I see a rambling rose that needs help with its trellis, so I mulch the flower and then head of to help the rose. Now I am somewhere in the near of the kitchen garden where I usually find some rape sugar peas (I could live on just sugar peas if I had to). Happily I go there, have some peas, talk to the vegetables, get a planting spade to remove a dandelion that threatens to suffocate the salad. Oh look! The irises are flowering. I bought them, as very small rhizomes and now, finally I will get to see the flowers. Of to them! Thus, I jump from plant to plant and from part to part in the garden. Four hours later I have weeded a little, eaten some more sugar pea pods, moved some plants to a better place, said some encouraging words to the bees and some less encouraging words to the Lily Beetles. What I haven’t done yet is reached the front door or changed my clothes. I tend to garden in skirt and high heels. My handbag is to be found somewhere along the trace as is every gardening tool we have. Luckily my husband eventually starts a rescue mission to find me and make sure I get something to eat, Otherwise I would probably be out there till midnight, falling asleep by the rhubarbs.

This works well during the growing season. When everything is growing and flowering it gives the garden a lush and generous feeling. It is November that is the problem. In November all the leaves have left the branches and cover the ground. The perennials have died back and the bushes stand there, all naked. As a gardener I am quite happy about it. The leaves help everything to survive the winter and give the worms something to do. The perennials (at least some of them) will look very nice in the winter, covered with frost or snow, so I don’t mind them either.
But as someone who welcomes non-gardening people to her house, well, I am not so happy about it. Then I suddenly see that everything is either grey or muddy brown. That the wheelbarrow still stands in the middle of the lawn (in the middle of a project of course, what else) and that the perennial stems make everything look untidy. Non-gardening people seem to believe that the garden of an enthusiast should look tidy, neat and at its best, at every moment of the year. Well, maybe it should, but it doesn’t.
Therefore it is always a relief when the snow arrives. In one moment the naked trees and bushes start looking pretty again. Event the perennials look good. No muddy brown, just a soft white, clean cover. The transformation is complete. Now I calmly await new visitors and when someone say ‘It looks just like a Christmas card’ I smile, happily aware of the fact that no one knows the large thing on the lawn is not a bush, it’s the wheel barrow and that the gardening tools are lost, once again.