my winter garden

It is finally snowing — real snow, the kind that comes down in giant, fluffy flakes, the kind that stays on the ground. The kind that covers everything in adorable mounds of white.

This is important because snow cover is essential to my winter garden. My winter garden is the most perfect of all my gardens — the snow hides all my faults. All the plants that I didn't know what to do with, all the bushes I didn't prune, all the weeds I helpfully "forgot" to weed and all the plant matter I never got around to deadheading. There's the promise of spring and some irrational optimism that this year, this year I am going to be better. I will weed. I will clean up after the flowering masses. I will be a new person: the kind of person who gardens.

By way of pictoral demonstration — this is what it looks like outside, right now:


It is snowing. Heavily. And this is what I decided to do, this very afternoon:


I brought the garlic in. It had been harvested and had been sitting outside, "drying out," since ... er. July.

This whole "being a gardener, being a better person" thing ... it's a work in progress.