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Virtual Winter I: A few tentative excuses for snow.

© Carol Wallace

If reports from gardeners across the US are any indication, the white stuff is already falling, even in the South. This is somewhat depressing.

Until the snow flies, I find myself believing that I might get an Indian Summer, (Yes--I'm an eternal optimist.) I have plans to dig my potted daylily proliferations out from under the mulch and plant them. I muse about scattering poppy seeds and other hardy little seeds that will wait patiently until spring. I still eyeball the fall bulbs in the stores and think I might start another patch of daffodils.

And then I wake to a world of white. Planning, musing and eyeballing come to a screeching halt.

My husband tells me he hated snow until he took up skiing. I tried skiing. I'm a klutz. On the other hand, since I've been a gardener, I've learned to value it snow in a different way.

First of all, I've learned to value it as mulch. The first year I gardened was followed by a truly dreadful winter, with several successive snowfalls of 30" or more. I was frantic, because I'd gambled with a lot of plants not quite hardy for my zone. They were all so far down in the snow that I couldn't even see them, much less check their health. Only the top of a Delaware Valley azalea could be seen.

But then came spring. And lo and behold--everything survived! Even plants that were supposed to have been annuals. Snug in their white blankets, they had been protected from drying winds, from invading pests. Snow is insulation. The only plant that suffered was the Delaware Valley azalea. Every part above the snow line had windburn, and had to be pruned away.

By the next winter I was a certifiable garden addict. Winter was spent reading every garden book I could beg, borrow or steal, and praying for snow. I pored over catalogs and made endless lists, with bright visions of future gardens dancing in my head.

Here again, the snow proved to be a blessing. Looking down at the yard from my second story window, I saw, not the yard of summer, with all of its warts and strange extrusions, but a blank white canvas. While my drawing skills are meager, I was able to draw ovals and curves and turn the canvas into a series of garden areas--an island bed around the huge old conifers, a meadow dancing down a weedy slope. a pond by the gazebo. Snow conceals the "givens" and reveals possibilities. And all of those first possibilities are now realities. My husband has come to shudder when he sees me staring out that window, wondering how much more land he has to till, and how much more I'm likely to invest in new plants from those winter catalogs.

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