Old dog, old snow. Perfect.

Nope. Nothing’s changed since yesterday. The garden is still frozen. Old snow is not pretty. Poets wax on about the beauty and stillness of winter but I’m thinking it’s time to move on.

Sydney Eddison, writer, gardener and lecturer, wrote:

“Perfection in life and in the garden depends on a counterpoise too fragile to maintain because time is always moving forward.”

(For those of you, like me, who stumbled on counterpoise it means the state of being in equilibrium.)

Her perspective comes in handy at this time of the year. Tomorrow night, we push time ahead by one hour. In the process, we’ll have pulled spring a little closer. Moving forward doesn’t get much better than this and, hey, I’m OK with being imperfect. Meanwhile, the trees and perennials in the garden are dormant. In their passive resistance to winter they have collectively slowed the garden down to a brief convergence of almost-perfection.