Every winter is followed by the promise of spring, colorful flowers and a bountiful harvest…Nature shows her love for the life with every bloom.
This is January. Even in the Sonoran Desert, it is cold. It can freeze. This winter, I have been tucking my garden into bed with flannel sheets (hoping my husband won’t notice they are missing from our bed).
One evening, as I was busily tucking due to a freeze warning, I found myself gently talking to each plant and humming a little song in between phrases. “There you go little babies, ahh, isn’t that nice and warm?” Or, “Here you go sweet cabbages, tucking you in against the frost.” It’s not too different from the way used to tuck my children in at night.
I guess I never realized that I actually say everything out loud. As I came around one of the garden beds, my husband stepped out from behind the Hollyhocks. Startled, I immediately stopped talking and humming.
“Who are you talking to?” He asked. Then, glancing at my garden beds, “Are those our flannel sheets?”
I felt myself get that “deer in the headlights look.”
Um, “Nooooo, those are old sheets we don’t use anymore.” I smiled. “I wasn’t talking out-loud, was I?”
He grinned at me and said “Right. You’ve been talking to your plants for as long as I have known you. It’s nothing new.”