{"id":2479,"date":"2023-01-28T18:11:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T18:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2023-01-28T18:11:26","modified_gmt":"2023-01-28T18:11:26","slug":"inspiration-wearing-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/inspiration-wearing-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration, Wearing Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

January, I defy you. \u00a0Your dank, slate-shadowed days are but a passing blip, barely worthy of acknowledgement.<\/p>\n

February, I see you lurking there in the shadows, ready to smother us with your utmost:\u00a0 Your truncated days when gray blankets the drizzly world down into the marrow of your bones and the golden touch of sunshine seems like a distant, irretrievable fantasy of the past.<\/p>\n

But you can forget it.\u00a0 Neither of you are taking me down, because Fern will not let me forget that different, maybe better, days are ahead.<\/p>\n

We have some history, Fern and I.\u00a0\u00a0 This is our fifth winter together, and we\u2019ve logged some miles across the seasons of our shared journey.\u00a0 After such an extended relationship, this winter she earned an official name, though not an especially creative one, because she is a, well, you catch on here—a fern, of the commonly called \u201casparagus\u201d variety.\u00a0 This plant is described by one of the expert gardening sources as \u201can attractive herbaceous perennial that is easy to grow\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Without a breath for pause I\u2019d shove that description one step further:\u00a0 These suckers are dang near immortal.<\/p>\n

Fern first joined our household as a young sprout, growing wonderfully on a hot, west-facing patio, adding height and lush volume, almost like a great hairdo, to a grouping of flowering pots.<\/p>\n

She performed so well that first summer that I decided on a whim, and a fleeting nod to the garden budget, to see if I could winter her successfully near a sunny window inside the house.\u00a0 This experiment was met by Fern with, at best, grumpy cooperation.\u00a0 Even when comfortably damp in her sunny spot, she littered needles all over the floor, jabbed me with prickly insistence when I tried to trim her away from the window blinds, and generally made herself a pain in the neck.<\/p>\n

When I decided to move at the end of another hot summer, a cherished friend offered to keep my favorite plants while I was in temporary quarters for a few months.\u00a0 I debated about sending her to foster care, well-acquainted with her cantankerous nature, but my kindly friend was game, so off Fern went.<\/p>\n

Temporary quarters stretched over the winter months in the sad, dark season of COVID, and plant reports from foster care were cheerfully delivered.\u00a0 All were doing well, though Fern was demonstrating her unsavory winter behavior.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m trimming and watering it and doing my best, but I don\u2019t know,\u201d said my patient pal.\u00a0 She told a mutual friend that one of my plants might not make it, and the friend said, \u201cOh, no, I hope it\u2019s not her favorite!\u201d\u00a0 Haha, I responded to that story, no worries there.\u00a0 If she dies, she dies.<\/p>\n

But she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Fern emerged again on the new patio when spring arrived, turned home to explode to an even more massive, resplendent size, fronds waving jauntily in the warm summer breezes.\u00a0 Another summer came and went as Fern reigned over the patio pot garden.\u00a0 Then last fall arrived, time to shut down the patio; what to do?<\/p>\n

Somehow, I didn\u2019t have it in me to face another prickly, messy winter with Fern.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ll cut her way back and just try to save a few sprouts, I thought, but her root system had grown so dense I couldn\u2019t even pull the blasted green monster out of the pot without help.\u00a0 Exasperated, weary, mind and heart focused on other things, I cut off all the prickly stalks and stuck the large, heavy pot in the back corner of the patio, abandoned.\u00a0 Fern and I had run our course together; surely those years of great summers was more than enough.<\/p>\n

The holidays arrived, and with them the threat of the coldest temperatures in recent memory.\u00a0 Preparing outdoors for anything that could be damaged, I grabbed the pot on a whim, sure that Fern was dead but wondering if the pot might freeze and crack.\u00a0 I shoved the heavy thing just inside the patio door without further thought, scrambling to finish my freeze-prep tasks.\u00a0 Turning again to other things over the next days and weeks, I ignored it completely as the holidays commenced, just waiting to shove it back out the door as soon as weather permitted.<\/p>\n

The post-freeze thaw brought sunshine, and with it, a surprise.\u00a0\u00a0 Bending to move the heavy pot in a late surge of post-holiday organizing, I was stunned to see several small green sprouts emerging from the cluster of dead brown spikes that were alone in the pot just a few weeks before.<\/p>\n

Fern was back. And I didn\u2019t know whether to praise or grieve.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Fern in early Jan., sprouting by the window, against all odds.<\/p><\/div>\n

Wow!\u00a0 I thought first.\u00a0 No water, no nothing, yet I didn\u2019t kill her.\u00a0 Dang, I thought next, do I really want to keep messing with this blasted thing after all this time?<\/p>\n

Yet it seems that the die is cast.\u00a0 Fern stands stubbornly by the windows with the view of the woods behind the house, where dead leaves, muddy bark, and bare limbs declare the drudgery of late winter.\u00a0 Her prickly, unwieldy green stalks duplicate and triplicate against all odds, standing between me and the woody morass, declaring refusal to submit to the season.\u00a0 I will not be ignored or intimidated, I will not surrender, I will not starve or die of thirst, Fern insists.\u00a0 I will outlast.\u00a0 It’s almost as though she is telling me: You can do the same.<\/p>\n

Who am I to argue?\u00a0 Yet on so many days, it is a hard message to accept.<\/p>\n

Winter is such a daunting companion in times when the world suffers on nearly every possible front.\u00a0 COVID will not be banished.\u00a0 Zelensky desperately needs tanks to hang on.\u00a0 Certain branches of U.S. government operate like, at best, the mocking skits from Saturday Night Live, stretching credulity for any person with an atom of common sense.\u00a0 Eggs cost more than your electric bill. Global drivers of despair loom everywhere we turn.<\/p>\n

What is left for our late-winter gloom but to watch for encouragement in the smallest of things?\u00a0 Fern earned the right to remain undisturbed in her post by the window, growing increasingly, amazingly taller, even while root-bound, dry, and neglected, interrupting my view of the dark, still woods beyond.\u00a0 If I remember to watch her progress, to pay attention, maybe I, too, can remember that beyond darkest of winter days, spring still follows.\u00a0 It\u2019s so hard these days, isn\u2019t it, to remember to hope?<\/p>\n

So, I am keeping my eye on Fern.\u00a0 Hoping that I can be as tough as she is; not sure, every single day, but hoping.\u00a0 She sets the bar, or shall I say the branch, pretty daggone high.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Fern in summer-glory state<\/p><\/div>\n

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January, I defy you. \u00a0Your dank, slate-shadowed days are but a passing blip, barely worthy of acknowledgement. February, I see you lurking there in the shadows, ready to smother us with your utmost:\u00a0 Your truncated days when gray blankets the drizzly world down into the marrow of your bones and the golden touch of sunshine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[238,240,239],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mid-life-adventures","category-uncategorized","tag-asparagus-fern","tag-finding-hope","tag-winter-doldrums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}