on nostalgia

I always get a little nostalgic for the season that has just passed, no matter how tired I was of it at the time.  I picked up this end-of-winter stem on my walk today. Spent. Tired. Wind blown. Done. It’s evocative of how I was feeling just a couple of weeks ago. But here we are, on the brink of greening. Living with the seasons–noticing them tip-toe in, fully express, and then quietly die back–if one of my great pleasures in life. In my book, I talk about the 72 microseasons of the North. I love every one of them. Like children, I don’t really have a favorite and can’t imagine life without any one of them.

over-wintered garden stem