Snow for Thanksgiving

The wind is rattling the windows at my house. It's dark and snowy in Seattle and I am sitting here thinking about the fields. The wind must be whipping though the frosty grasses. The dirt must be frozen clods. How is that young cover crop surviving? I am so glad that Shondell and I finished planting all 8,800 bulbs earlier this month. This time last year, we hadn't even started digging the trenches (we were really behind). We still need to mulch the peonies and roses, but for now the snow can keep weeds at bay. And the cold keeps the flood risk down -- for now. I hope the ranunculus and anemones in the hoop house are ok. This is my first year planting them and I'm not sure if I am supposed to be running out there in freezing weather to coddle them. They looked beautiful last week:

With all this weather, I am especially grateful that Adam and Megan at Oxbow got ahead of things and got produce out of the fields and to the shop today. We will have carrots, parsnips, potatoes, cabbage, parsley and shallots, among other Thanksgiving vegetables for Tuesday and Wednesday before the holiday. Whew.

On Saturday Josh and the kids and I visited another kind of garden, the Conservatory in Volunteer Park. The chrysanthemums on display will forever change your mind about the flower. And they even had a few cut ones for sale, which I had to buy because it was my birthday and I knew no one would buy a flower farmer flowers.

Poem for a Melancholy Day

YOUNG MAN PICKING FLOWERS

All at once he is no longer
young with his handful of flowers
in the bright morning of their fragrance
rising from them as though they were
still on the stalk where they opened
only this morning to the light
in which somewhere unseen the thrush
goes on singing in perfect song
into the day of the flowers
and while he stands there holding them
the cool dew runs from them onto
his hand at this hour of their lives
it it the hand of the young man
who found them only this morning

-- W.S. Merwin