Today I pulled The Seasons in a Flower Garden: A Handbook of Information and Instruction for the Amateur by Louise Shelton (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909) off my shelf to see what she wrote about January in the garden.
September… October…November… midwinter… March…April…
What happened to December, JANUARY, and February?
I see that Ms. Shelton has decided to lump December, January, and February into something she called “midwinter.” If I were her editor, well, I think I’d tell her to go back and try harder to find some content for “midwinter” and not have gardeners, especially new gardeners, think they can just skip the midwinter months.
But I wasn’t her editor, so all we have from Ms. Shelton for “Midwinter” is a poem called “Under the Snow” by T. Hempstead.
The first verse:
It is pleasant to think, just under the snow,
That stretches so bleak and blank and cold,
Are beauty and warmth that we cannot know,–
Green Fields and leaves and blossoms of gold.
There is a word to describe that world under the snow — subnivean.
I like it.
And now that we have snow on the ground, I am thinking about all the subnivean activity that could be taking place… burrowing animals, especially.
Anyway, I advise not skipping “midwinter” as Louise Shelton did. I advise using it carefully for buying seeds and making plans, and catching up on your reading about gardening. Because the subnivean world will be revealed as the snow melts, and we’ll soon be looking for more snowdrops, the first crocuses, and other signs of a garden waking up.
Then we’ll suddenly be in a big ol’ hurry with too much to do, wondering why we wasted “midwinter” on a poem!
Skip, indeed! At your own peril!
Lovely poem, 🙂