02/25/10
Appreciating Winter
 I’m writing this on a peaceful February Sunday from a comfortable chair with a view out a generous north-facing window. A bird feeder is visible outside, swinging lazily from the old maple tree near the back terrace and providing an agreeable distraction. Evergreens further out in the yard allow cover for hardy animals – mostly chickadees, but also a cardinal or two, and squirrels, always the squirrels, who on sunny days skitter about precariously in the trees from limb to limb high up off the ground. A well-used deer trail through ample snow cuts diagonally across the vista. An impressive old spruce, each needle and branch dusted with last night’s snow, towers majestically over the scene.
The season possesses a charm that changes often – much more frequently in winter than at any other time of the year. One morning the trees may be crusted with brittle hoarfrost, the next a freezing rain may have encased each twig and bough with molten glass.
Surprisingly, I often feel more attuned to the colors of winter than those of the summer garden. January’s colors don’t shout or beg, but respectfully ask to be considered. Because there are fewer of them, I appreciate the winter colors and can focus on minor differences. The sky is the palest of blues – never the rich tone of July – or the color of a burnished coin, somewhere between white and silver. A soft, milky-white morning fog gives safe harbor to landmark trees and telephone poles alike, releasing them slowly from the ground up as midday approaches. In the winter landscape, brown’s an important color and wants more respect than it’s allowed in any other season. In winter, brown exhibits a wealth of diversity.  The brown of grasses poking through the snow, for instance, can hold a touch of salmon, that of sedum seedheads, a bit of maroon, and that of the white oak foliage that enchants us by hanging on the tree through winter, a rich, leathery russet. The sun, low in the sky, casts long, violet shadows, delicate substitutes for the color of summer’s salvias. Delicate, too, is the sun’s light splashed across the sky at day’s end – barely a blush and fading quickly. The landscape in February is scarcely less beautiful than it was five months before, but it does take observant eyes to seek out that beauty. A stillness within us that neatly parallels winter’s calm allows us to effortlessly focus on that beauty. I’ve always maintained that winter’s forced hiatus from garden chores is one of the greatest gifts Minnesota gives the gardener. To me the winter landscape possesses all the joys of the summer garden with none of the attendant aches and cares. by Steve Kelley
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