My February Garden

It is 9 degrees below zero this morning again. The garden lies under a thick blanket of snow. Asleep, so say the romanticists.  It is just dead, guys. Let's just be real. I went out as the sun was coming up to take pictures of it. Those warnings about frostbite on exposed flesh in x amount of minutes are probably true according to the way my camera hand felt when I got in.

 The zinnia row rattles brown and cold above the snow. There is a certain interest of color and texture here. Blues and browns. Winter.

We willingly hold the memories of summer and happiness. But that is only half of any story. Before summer and spring is always a winter. We don't savor our winters so much though, do we? That is as it should be, I think. Winter is and must be, but it is in spring and summer we rejoice, both in the seasons of our gardens and our hearts. Heaven will be eternal summer, don't you think?

The snow is so deep that the pine boughs are caught and pinned to the ground.

 Oak leaves, caught in their falling in the bean trellis, hang stranded until spring. We failed to clean off the old vines last fall. Nor did we get much of a crop of beans and allowed them to dry right on the vine.  If you look closely at the next few picture you will see pods hanging. When they fall into the warming soil next spring; we will have volunteer pole beans. For now they wait, cold and frozen in the pod. Death and resurrection is in every bean seed and in every garden.

 Where we live snug and warm this long, cold winter.

 The smoke from the living room chimney catching the first sun.

The way the arbor looked last summer at the height of living glory.

The way it looks now.  This is beautiful, too. It is just that winter is a different pretty than summer. You only have to know how to see both to enjoy it.