Cold Climate Gardening

I just want you to know I am continuing my resolve to get stronger for gardening. You got that right–it’s not spring training, it’s training for spring!

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Gardeners know that the calendar year is an artificial construct. It’s not even so much that the new year really begins in spring, as that to everything there is a season. Consequently, I find the concept of New Year’s resolutions rather alien to my thinking and way of life. I am resolving to do better at one thing or another throughout the year as it is brought to my attention. This blogging challenge put me in mind to share some of my garden-related resolutions with you. Most important resolution: Get stronger. They say a gardener’s hands are her most important tools, but what good are hands without strong arms, shoulders, back . . . you get the idea. I’ve learned from personal experience that gardening is a lot more fun when the heavy work isn’t such a struggle. And increased strength decreases the kind of muscle sprains that can sideline a gardener who doesn’t want to spare a minute on the sidelines. But yeah, it takes time to build up strength–and maintain it.

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I myself would like to meet Death in the flower garden–falling facedown onto a cushion of Dianthus gratianopolitanus, if it’s not to much to ask. ~ Elisabeth Sheldon, Time and the Gardener : Writings on a Lifelong Passion

But last and best, I’d like to thank my grandmother Elizabeth McIver, long dead, who when told she must give up her gardening to lengthen her life, picked up her trowel and went to weed. ~ Joe Eck, Elements of Garden Design

I want to garden until the day I die, don’t you? Early in 1997 I pulled a packet of gardening postcard ads out of my mailbox. On the front cover was a photo of an old woman, the essence of “granny.” (Sorry I can’t show it to you; I was unable to obtain permission.) She had a mound of white curls piled atop her head, tied in place with a red bandana. Wearing a flowered smock, she faces the camera, hand pruners in one knuckle-swollen hand, and a big bunch of bachelor’s buttons in the other–and she’s smiling. In a flash I knew what I wanted my retirement to be like: gardening, gardening, and more gardening!

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