Springing into a Fresh Start

This is my favorite time in the Florida seasonal calendar. It's that brief but magical moment when we can keep the windows and doors open, when the humidity is reasonably low, and everything in the garden is emerging from its short winter nap. This is the moment of unfurling. It reminds me a bit of putting the clothes for a particular season away, leaving them in the attic for months, and then opening the box again, only to reveal a wonderful world of clothes that I've always loved and forgotten for a moment that I even owned them. Everything has a newness about it.

The Tibouchina in bloom again

The best part of this season is the fact that I begin my gardening with a clean slate. It's a curious truth about gardening that is, unfortunately, not often replicated in human relationships. No matter what I've done wrong in the past, no matter how horrific the outcome has been, there's always hope--perhaps even faith--that things will turn out differently, that I will enjoy a rich and satisfying harvest. This is yet another lesson I wish I could somehow translate into other areas of life.

The seeds I sowed indoors are now sturdy seedlings that I am hardening off outside, and they're nearly ready to join the plants already producing in the vegetable garden. And despite my difficulties with getting reasonable yields from my vegetables since we moved here, despite what seems to be far too many suggestions that gardening here is exceedingly difficult, I still have some inexplicable belief that this season will be different. Hope, indeed, springs eternal when it comes to gardening. 

The secret garden is coming along. I completed one planter. I don't know how I feel about it, so I've decided to take a few weeks to get a clear idea before I move forward. I carefully pondered whether I should get a tattoo nearly 20 years ago, and the delay served me well, so I give the same consideration to many other decisions. But I'm happy to hear what the rest of you think of it.

I have a few reservations…and the upper
plants have not fully grown in.

I gave the Wolfie statue a new coat of paint after I cleaned off the rust. I think the new color is more in keeping with my sweet boy's coat.

Wolfie is waiting for new friends to
be planted

So it's a moment of joyful anticipation that we're experiencing here. Let's hope we learn a little from our mistakes, find pleasure in the smallest of victories, and always keep faith that things will get progressively better.