How to Garden in Winter

First of all, thank you. For your kind expressions of sympathy, emails, cards, and just being there. It truly does help, knowing that so many people are sending good thoughts, prayers, and hugs. I guess we're at that age where so many of us have had to deal with the loss of a parent, family member, or good friend, and the support of this lovely knitting/reading/blogging community is something I deeply and sincerely appreciate.

Those of you who have experienced this know there is much to do, and to be honest, I haven't wanted to do any of it. Notify people, make plans for a funeral, make choices that simultaneously feel overwhelmingly important and yet not important at all in the grand scheme of things, clean out, decide what to do with all the bits and pieces of a person's life, and then there is the business end of it. Death certificates, the bank, the will, the lawyer, Social Security, multiple insurance companies, doctors, cancellations, bills, and the seemingly endless phone calls. It was during one of those phone calls (I was on hold for an hour and 42 minutes) when this view from the kitchen window inspired me.

That's the garden, on an 18 degree day and encased in several inches of ice after a day of snow, sleet, and freezing rain. I certainly couldn't garden outdoors, but I could plug in my phone, put it on speaker, and garden inside while I waited.

I have a lot of plants, and while I move many of them outside after the last frost in May, they just kind of limp along inside during the winter. I have them in the best light I can provide, but many of my sunniest windows have steam radiators under them, and I don't want to cook the poor plants' roots at those windows. I tend to neglect watering, fertilizing, and pruning in the winter because it's a messy job indoors, but the perfect one when you're forced to wait on hold.

I mixed up some dilute fertilizer, grabbed my pruning scissors, and got to work.

The pots all have built-in drainage saucers, but they leak, so I water and prune in the kitchen sink before hanging the plants back up.

I water the larger ones in place and use a turkey baster to quickly suck up any extra water

 from the saucer before it overflows onto the floor.

All my little orchids get a good rinse and a little fertilizer in hopes that they might bloom again soon.

Hearing "We apologize for the delay. Your call is very important to us, so please remain on the line,"

 means that I have time to decide if I should keep that last poinsettia that just won't give up. I did.

I returned all my well-tended plants to their locations, cleaned up my mess in the kitchen, and then

 miraculously got to speak to a human being on the phone. They only partially resolved the issue,

 but my spirits soared when I checked the mail and found this incredible gift from Kym.

I missed planting my amaryllis bulbs last fall because that was the beginning of my father's real decline. I can already see the tips of two flower shoots, so I'm thrilled and hopeful for Amaryllis Watch. Kym often says flowers are magical, and these most certainly are.