snow

Something in me is missing the winter today.

Here is Fulton Park on a snowy night last winter, during one of those huge snow dumps. That purple sky is unreal. The walkway under the Lindens (didn't give a thought to what they were at the time) looked so magical I never even wanted to walk down it, so that I could preserve it just as it was in my mind.

How different it feels to come home from work at 4pm - practically elementary school hours! - when it's light and warm. By the time I finish my work at BBG in December, 4pm will have a different feeling altogether, as winter comes on. There is going to be a Christmas party, which I'm pretty excited about - though work Christmas parties are usually weirder than they are fun - but this time I really do love the people I work with and it's also a little bit like Free Dress days at a school where uniforms are required. What will I wear to the ball?!

The part I'm most looking forward to is seeing the gardens change as the seasons do. Spring was such a burst of glamour and smells, every plant showing what it had been working on for months, like a school pageant, following what felt like endless fertilizing to bring in the blooms; then we mulched and mulched to protect the soil from heat in the summer months. June brought the most outrageous display of roses, which are mostly gone now, save for the "repeat bloomers," which ideally will keep coming until the first frost, and since my next rotation is with Sarah in the rose garden, I'll be systematically deadheading and cutting back dead wood. (We did the same for the lilacs a few weeks ago, which peaked in May.) For rose work, I'll definitely wear a wide-brimmed hat, since there is NO shade.

But I am most excited, oddly, about fall and winter in the gardens. In the fall we'll plant literally several hundred thousand bulbs; it's then that the evergreen specimen trees and special barks really show; not to mention the leaves turning, and quiet falling over everything a bit as the stream of visitors slows. It's during the winter that the gardeners assess the success of their work from that year, research solutions to issues they encountered, order seeds, and plan spring plantings.

What could be better than working in this kind of naturally shifting world, and having your work governed by seasons and daily weather? I'm thrilled not to observe seasons passing from a desk.

Jacob's first snow.