In summer I swim.

In the spring I remember how my dad said spring is the best time in the garden because everything is just starting, every bit of green is a gift, a surprise, a joy… unlike in summer when there’s just too much… everywhere, too much colour, too much muchness. He was right of course.

In winter I traipse a labyrinth in the snow.

But it’s this time of year, before winter, when it’s no longer really fall, when the leaves are mush but the snow hasn’t come yet, that it’s easy to think there’s nothing left for you to see in the garden.

You’d be wrong of course.

Because it’s only now that a certain sun becomes visible again after being hidden behind the foliage of a giant dogwood.

And another that you’d forgotten was even there, tucked into a cedar where you never look.

And how would you ever find the bluebird that fell from its branch on the burning bush, a bird you never see in summer through the green leaves or in the fall through the bright red ones but now in the naked season, and only if you walk close enough to think:  hey where’s that bluebird??  —there it is.

Every year you swear this moss is new.

And every year you are reminded at least once of something that that will grow next year for the first time.

Every year at this time you marvel at the structure of ferns and grasses and how some stay greener than others as they sleep.

And if not for this time of year would you think as often of the friend who loves to get hydrangeas from you to dry and use to decorate her xmas tree.

Would you notice ornaments?

Or see tiny footprints outside tiny doors?

Would you remember patriotic moose (not to mention extremely quiet mice)?

What blows your mind every year is how it’s all there all year round, buried in snow or hidden by show-offy leaves turning orange and gold, not to mention being upstaged all summer long by purples and blues, yellows, reds and pinks… oh my god, don’t even talk to me about reds and pinks… so needy… look at me, look at me!

Those pinks. Such hams.

Fred excepted of course.

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