The last Christmas cacti are blossoming near the greenhouse windows, safe from the wind on the other side. My winter tomatoes hold motionless to their trellises. The red and pink and white geraniums brought in from the autumn, bloom, then fall, then bloom again.
I have a journal of the greenhouse and the outside cycles. I keep a planting and nature log, and I carefully measure the natural progress of year. But now I'm losing interest in the records of that progress, am turning to plants that change the least.
I want things to stay the way they are. I don't care if equinox comes. I wish winter would never end. I'm comfortable with its limits. I'm content with the finite number of species in the ten by thirty foot greenhouse.
I know the static world better than I will ever know the new emerging world. Since the end of October, I've kept this season stable and warm. Even the white flies and the mealy bugs have contributed to equilibrium, their hunger offsetting growth.
At night I stand together with the plants around me. I identify with them, hide with them behind this glass south wall, feel our alliance and our common purpose. No April birds are singing. There are no fireflies or crickets to mark the mark the passage of the year and of my life, no signs that any of this could ever end.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Deep Winter and the second week of the Squashy Osage Fruit Moon. In the meantime, hunker down inside your cave, suspended from the passage of time.
