
Greetings friends!
A garden offers the opposite of the disembodied uncertainties of writing. It’s vivid to all the senses, it’s a space of bodily labor, of getting dirty in the best and most literal way, an opportunity to see immediate and unarguable effect… To spend time frequently with these direct experiences is clarifying, a way of stepping out of the whirlpools of words and the confusion they can whip up. In an age of lies and illusions, the garden is one way to ground yourself in the realm of the processes of growth and the passage of time, the rules of physics, meteorology, hydrology, and biology, and the realms of the senses.
So says Rebecca Solnit in Orwell’s Roses, her great non-biography biography of George Orwell.
By now in March, I would have already planned which plants to grow. I would have already chosen the perfect spots in the garden beds for each plant and selected the most suitable pots to display the more extravagant ones.
In my mind, I see begonias and petunias cascading over their containers, while fuchsias and coleus plants provide a colorful backdrop. The alliums are nodding their soft drummer heads in tune with gentle breezes in late spring.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to complete these preparations this year.
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