by Linda Jordan

We’re having a cold spell here. For the Puget Sound region that means temps in the teens at night. And it might get to the 30’s during the daytime. Maybe.

13F is as low as our zone 8b, will go hopefully. Otherwise I’ll be losing a lot of plants out in the garden. It’s crisp and bright out there and I don’t even want to go outside.

Luckily I’m sitting by the wood stove staying cozy. Most of the cats are inside too. Midwinter is a good time to dream.

I made decisions back in December about what I wanted to do for this year. Now, I’m getting more details down about what that means.

For writing, it means the novel I’m working on is gradually coming together. I’m getting to understand the characters and their interactions more. There are still lots of surprises (for me and hopefully my readers, too) that will pop up as everything weaves together.

For the garden, I’m sitting down with seed and plant catalogs and websites. Dreaming about what new fun things I want to grow this year. I don’t start a lot of plants by seed—we have no greenhouse and there’s no space in the house to rig up shelves with grow-lights. Any seeds started need to be able to go outside as soon as they germinate or I need to be able to start them in the soil outside.

I always grow poppies, nasturtiums and some sort of cosmos. I used to grow a lot of multi-stemmed sunflowers and I’ll be doing those again this year. And I’m going to try out an amaranth called Love Lies Bleeding. And some zinnias, which I’ve never grown from seed.

There are food experiments too. My vegetable garden consists of two 2’ tall x 2’ wide x 4’ long stock tanks with holes drilled in the bottom. I normally grow two tomato plants, two basils and a whole lot of salad greens: arugula, mustards, kale, snow peas and lettuce. Oh, and cilantro because I’m one of those people who adore it. This year I’m going to try some dragon’s tongue bush beans. The pods are streaked white, scarlet and green. Gaudy just the way I like my garden!

As the days get slowly longer in the northern half of the world and Imbolc approaches, I’m dreaming my year into existence. And taking small steps forward.

What are you dreaming to life in your part of the world?

Linda Jordan

Samhain is coming in a couple of weeks. For many people it’s a time to connect with their ancestors and do ritual with their family and friends. One of the ancient fire festivals.

For me, Samhain has always been a very solitary and sacred time. It’s about endings and contemplation. It’s the beginning of the Celtic year, their first day of winter and a couple days before my birthday. So, I begin a new trip around the sun.

Fall is fully here in my part of the world. Our deciduous trees and shrubs have begun the slow process of releasing leaves by now. Many of my perennials are on their way to disappearing back into the soil until next spring.

I walk around the garden noticing the absence of plants, bees and even spiders. Open spaces appear where a wall of leaves stood last month. There is a silence that settles on the garden, especially with morning fog enveloping me.

Inside me, there are endings as well. A busy season of doing, trying to keep up with my writing and the garden. The mad chaos of summer followed by the harvest of so many wondrous things.

The “death” of the garden leaves open a whole range of possibilities. The new year begins in the darkness of night. The days grow shorter. In the soil, roots are growing strongly. They’ll continue all winter long.

All of these endings leave space in my life and my psyche too. There’s room to contemplate where to go from here. I examine what didn’t work for me this last year and what I want to change.

I like to think of Samhain as a time to be in the dark and quiet and connect deeply with the earth and my life. To let go of all those experiments which failed and devise new ones. I’m not ready to plan them just yet. It’s a time to mull things over.

This is always a period of stopping and reassessing before doing a reset on my life.