Seeing Through the Dark

 The one thing we have in abundance right now is dark. There are the pandemic-related ones and here in the North are the geographical ones. If you sit very near the top of the world, as we do, light balances the seasons differently. We will have more light than we know what to do with come June, but for now the sun is tucking itself away.

And growing things need light, so this is the season of seed time and sleeping underground. For a gardener it can be a bit daunting saying goodbye to your veg patch and the perennial bed. I still have the wee solar fountain in my pond gurgling instead of plashing, and some flowers refuse to give up on the season yet. A few bold calendula are defying not only the dark and the cold but also the wind. 

If not for the gardening magazines that have to have something to say during the dormant season, I would have missed what was right in front of me--elegant seed heads.  We value the obvious: the splash of colour, the fragrance, the birds and the bees that come to admire them, but the raison d'etre, the pinnacle of any plant's achievement, are its seeds. 

And so today I noticed the seed heads of plants along the hedgerow and discovered a grace, an elgance that is overlooked during the show-ier season.  I gathered a fistful of these erstwhile weeds, which I was artfully arranging as I went along. 

I brought them home and put them in a humble, hard working jar instead of a vase and they seem to be enjoying the attention