Spring Forward: the Cruelest Time Change
April is not the cruelest month: March is. For two weeks now, we have been suffering in the name of daylight savings time, that government mandated messing with mother nature. Friends have been debating its relative merits and sins on social media soapboxes, but what any of us thinks about it just doesn't matter. Our protests are borne away in the ever rolling Twitter stream.
For the past fortnight, my family has been cursing the morning. It's dark, breakfast is cold, and carpool is late. We have struggled unsuccessfully with alarms and good intentions, recriminations fly over the breakfast table and dark circles deepen under our eyes. Finally, this weekend, in some sort of grand homeopathy, nature provided her own cure for what's been ailing us.
Last summer, we did some work on our house. it pretty much destroyed our back yard. As we saw the contractor ride off into the sunset with our daughters' patrimony, we resigned ourselves that it would be quite some time before we could put in sprinklers, beds and all the other niceties of the modern garden.
In the meantime, we have big dirt. We had thought to put in wildflower seeds to see us through the summer, but somehow we missed that window. I considered pouring sand and raking it in geometric patterns, like a zen garden or an alien cornfield, but our house is pretty traditional. Our taste in gardens runs more towards Edith Wharton meets the Orange Show.
My sister, who is a talented and sometime professional gardener, suggested that we put in zinnias. Just like Fetlock's mother in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm. Her loving description of her zinnias has stayed with me since I was a little girl, and visions of zinnias began dancing in my head.
My husband and our younger daughter went out to get the seeds. The best laid plans: they came home with a riotous mix of flower seeds, all pink and purple. So what happened to my zinnias? I asked, trying not to let my attachment to the Piggle Wiggle plan show. He: What are zinnias? She: I thought pink and purple would be prettier. Me: Oh.
We set out weeding and hoeing, and my daughter invited two preschoolers from across the street to help plant. With silver teaspoons, until I noticed, they planted some of the seeds in conventional holes. Then, in a fit of springtime exuberance, or maybe boredom, they broadcast the rest across the dirt.
We now have a Darwinian experiment for a back yard. We'll see where fertile ground lies, and what pink and purple vision erupts in our little Eden after April showers have had their way with our random seeds.
Next year, or maybe this fall if I'm frugal, I'll have sprinklers and beds. I can study the Texas Garden Resource book we just published and put in native plants that might actually go together in a more orderly way. By then my gardeners will be a little older, and I'll pay closer attention to the procurement phase of the project.
But, today, I have no complaints. The weekend in the sun has left us all with rosy cheeks, sore muscles, and happy spirits. We have planted good seeds, and something joyful is bound to sprout. It will still be dark in the morning, but this evening, we sat outside with the dogs relaxing in the late sun. Sure, we've lost an hour, and it took a while to reconcile our body clocks to the the theft. But before too long, we'll fall back again.
And on that October Sunday morning, as we linger over pancakes and bacon and look out on our garden, we won't even remember how grumpy we all were when we sprang forward.
Flowers make up for a multitude of sins.
If we are not able to keep our garden, if we are not able to take care of our mortal human world, heaven and salvation are vain.
~Robert Pogue Harrision in Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition
Cannot wait to see the blooming sea of pink and purple!!