The Clean-Out

Soon, March will seem like the unreal thing

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How good is it possible for a northern garden to look in March? Having read Monty Don’s Down to Earth over the winter, I’ve had his advice rattling around in my head: “accept no ugliness as a given.” Gardening could indeed be seen partly as an extended war against ugliness, since it involves editing out things you don’t want to see via plant placement, as well as a general beautification of the land via flowers and foliage. Even in winter, good green structural plants like yew and juniper add a sturdy freshness to the landscape. But, despite our best efforts, March is what it is: a muddy, questionable, theoretical season full of torn skies and bare branches.

It was therefore with more resolve than delight that I put on my work clothes and went out into the garden yesterday morning for the garden’s annual scouring. April will be full of the more exciting tasks of dividing perennials, making a few key purchases, and watching the daffodils unfold but, before any of that can properly go on, the palate needs to be cleansed. So, I raked, chopped, untangled, propped, clipped, stirred, and raked again, shedding off my Carhart jacket as I warmed to the work.

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I warmed to it emotionally as well as physically. There’s something healthy and symbolic and cathartic about removing all of last year’s dead material, raking the brown grass out of the fledgling green, and mowing over all the dessicated piles, dumping the resultant chop into the compost heap. Drained by the ongoing drought, our pond also needed topping up, so I did most of that work to the soothing gurgle of water running over stones. The robins, wrens, and cardinals were loud in the maple overheard and, gradually, everything began to take on an orderly and intentional, if not exactly living or beautiful, appearance.

Then, of course, there was the first crocus coming up through the raked-back leaves, a butter-yellow star on the edge of the yard’s blank brown sky. I knelt down to look at it, a tough but fragile thing, stunned by the impossibility of its color. Soon, the primroses, daffodils, and hyacinths will come in, followed by roses, peonies, and salvia, and finally the full, frothing resplendence of summer with too many blooms to keep up with or name. By then, March will seem like the unreal thing, too blank and distant to precisely remember. And that is the strange blessing of human memory: we are always entirely where we are, the past unreal, the future unlikely. Those uncertainties can sometimes be nearly unbearable. But there are also days when one crocus is enough.

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