I am awake, staring at the electric glow of the new LED streetlights against a black-blue sky.
Tucked inside a cocoon of pillows and duvet, I listen to the southwesterly wind crash against the house. I’ve never heard the windows rattle quite like this before.
Earlier this week, we had our first taste of spring. Out came the rakes and leaf blowers. Gardens were cleared and everything packed neatly into paper bags for pickup.
But March has plans of its own.
The snow is back, sparkling in the unnatural light. I watch the ghostly spirals drift from the rooftops, then disappear through the swaying trees.
I can’t stop thinking about all the tiny lives that were raked up with the leaves, or left exposed to the sudden cold. Caterpillars. Beetles. Sleeping bees tucked into hollow stems or beneath the damp cover of last year’s garden. So much small life.
Maybe it’s habit. Maybe just not knowing. Or too many other things to think about. And honestly, I don’t blame them. This winter has been tough.
Still, I wonder what people might do differently if they knew. If they were asked to picture summer, bowls of freshly picked berries, bumblebees in tomato flowers and yellow squash blossoms, butterflies crossing the yard.
Here, the garden remains as it has since fall: tangled stalks and hollow stems of asters and wild bergamot, rotting leaves settling into the earth, everything untidy and soft.
This mess is shelter.
This untidiness is food
for the life waiting below.
The garden rests beneath the returning snow.
