It’s mid-January. I’m having to remind myself of that all the time right now. Usually by this point in the winter, it’s been dark and gloomy for months on end, no sun or blue sky in sight for another month or three. Usually by now, I’ve gotten sick a few times – strange ones unlike the simple cold I used to get every few years before we moved here. Is it the mold? Is it the D deficiency? I have no idea.
This year, however, the weather has been oddly, steadily, and wonderfully uplifting. Sun and blue sky have been a constant. I haven’t even thought once to take the Vitamin C and Vitamin D pills I loaded up on in the fall. We haven’t had one fire in the fireplace yet – there hasn’t yet been a prolonged cold spell to feel the need to huddle around a burning fire.
And most unusual is the state of our garden. Usually by now, I haven’t even walked back to look at it, knowing the cold has killed off all signs of life. But this year is so strange and different – my plants have been growing continuously since the end of the summer. I added in a few bags of soil from the hardware store in late September so that the garden would have a little more chance to get going in the spring. Instead, every plant that was there began growing immediately and hasn’t stopped since. The little delicate fuchsia that usually dies down at the slightest hint of cold has been going strong, even blooming throughout Christmastime. The artichoke that never did very well is reaching to the sky. The calendulas are cranking and the snapdragons are bushing.
Around the house, flower bulbs that hide under the ground until the first hints of spring sunshine have already burst upward.
We have some hellebores by our kitchen window that never bloomed over the summer, so I cut them down to the ground in the fall for a fresh start in the coming spring. They began growing in December and today are packed with flowers. It’s so odd.
Someone told my husband that the little frogs we usually see hopping in the spring grass are starting to come out now. And speaking of grass, last night when I took the dog out, I noticed that we might actually have to mow in January – there is a large patch that’s normally dirt and now it has healthy, lengthy, dark green shoots.
I’m loving this. Not global warming, just personal warming. Usually by January, if the sun somehow peeks unencumbered through the clouds for fifteen minutes, the kids and I stop everything we’re doing, throw off our jackets, and sit directly in its rays, still as statues and longing for it to stay that way, as though we’re in Finland or something.
This year we have not even once felt sun-deprived. It sure makes enjoying the rain, wind, and cold a lot more bearable when it comes in three-day stints rather than five-month sentences.
The streaming sun is shining in on my bed and calling me out to play. I’ll see you out there!
