kind words amidst the snow

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A few kind words from Mr. Demetre:

Your hands hold roses in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

from Richard Wilbur, “The Beautiful Changes

Thank you!

*a tiny footnote, for various reasons I’ve taken the comments sections out, mainly to skirt that modern marvel of spam. Yet I had to share Jim’s lovely sentiments today.

Rallying myself to wade into the drifts to refill the bird feeders that were buried in snow last night.

Solstice

Solstice

Sunflowers, meet winter.

The pre-winter chores were done just in the nick of time, it has been nasty and not the sort of weather you just want to hang out in at all.

I completely forgot about the paperwhites I had potted up two weeks ago, and they sit nicely outside in the snow, probably not a ghost of a chance for them now.

a remarkable tip….christmas lights and bulb planting

On Gardening with Cisco this week offered up a remarkable tip, one I actually participated in today.

How to remember when to plant your bulbs? Do it at the same time you put your Christmas lights up.

Today Ben put up the Christmas lights and I finally put those incredible iris rhizomes that Yvette gave me into the ground. It has been a few weeks (since crush actually) and I am terrified that I might have killed them. Sigh. Actually I put them into the raised bed to winter over and hope to transplant them in the spring to a more permanent spot in the front yard. However, since the front yard is such an overwhelming task, I think I will now refuse to profess to those many projects that might never get done.

I have realized I am only one type of gardener, and that is a hapless gardener. Today in the shed, I looked down at the table and saw the bowl of paper whites I had been ignoring since last year had started to sprout. I put them in a couple of tiny pots….there is no such thing as planning ahead in my life.

Now remember how you wished you had planted more snowdrops all over the yard.

I also need to put some cute flowers in the box outside on the front side of the house. The cyclamen did not survive my neglect.