Cruel But Not Cruelest

February only seems like the cruelest month. In fact, it's the self-hating month, eager to be done with itself, propelling us mercifully into March. But what do we find when we suddenly find ourselves in March?  Confusion, that's what.  March brings great dressing challenges, for one thing.  Bundling up in February is the obvious choice, but in March we're either over or under-dressed, sweating or shivering. March is when the colds hit us.  March is when we get ahead of ourselves.

The earth, too, is perplexed and ambivalent.  Soon I'll be watching for its first uncertain ventures into spring.  The life buried deep within will reassert itself, thumbing its green nose at winter's best efforts to bury it.  Even now the sap is rising, and my friends at Hinkle-Garton Farmhouse are busy collecting maple syrup to boil down.  Crocuses first, fragile but insistent, then daffodils, looking at first like bewildered overdressed visitors to a barren planet, only later settling into the emerging green around them.

The poor crocuses will quickly disappear into deer bellies.  But the tan marauders don't eat the crocus foliage, so the bulbs survive, and here we have Exhibit A of a gardener's crazy, desperate faith:  someday, somehow, the deer will move on to happier grazing grounds, and the crocuses will flourish, and my poor garden, likewise tattered, battered, and broken by the deer, will return to itself.  Until then, I am but a guardian, protecting my charges as best I can, watching for that happy day when I can plant fearlessly, at last more gardener than guard.

Next entry, "Cages."  Here's a teaser: