The Fence's Centering Grace

By this time of winter the fencing around the garden is looking pretty tired.  I made the decision to leave it in place after putting the trenches to bed for the season, figuring "what the heck." That may have been a mistake.  After a winter's worth of north winds and drifting snow it is looking pretty weary with its leaning stakes and slackened mesh.  Springtime, in other words, will involve more than just planting.  Straightening and tensioning will require their due.

Still, I am glad I left it in place.  Absent that visual circumference, the garden would have disappeared into the snow-covered prairie; merging with the expanses of tall grass laid down by the burdens of the cold.  I like glancing out the window and tracing with my eyes that demarcation anchoring our lives in this place and beckoning us forward toward the coming season's next lessons in the classroom of growing food.  Set apart out there is the reason we came.  I recall the packets of seeds already arrived and waiting their turn in this great and wondrous horticultural dance.  I note the apprehension lingering just below my consciousness, whether last year's asparagus plants and berry bushes survived the heat and the drought to emerge stronger into this season's offering, whether the fruit trees, barely adolescent, will produce a crop, and whether my soil preparations last fall will make a difference.

The days are growing longer -- the sun flexing its muscles toward spring and warming up for the marathon of summer.  Seeding time is nearing as attention shortly turns to the greenhouse and its fragile incubation.  The compost has long since been ordered and delivered, and the seed trays are restless to be filled.  A new cultivating tool is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.  The layout is designed online and awaiting its actualization.  Already my psyche wanders about italicized, leaning forward toward the tilling and the tending.  But the days are not here just yet.  Last night fell six inches of snow with more predicted in the coming days.  A crystalline white blanket "shushes" the acres into quietness, reminding them -- and me -- that winter has not finished with us yet.

But over the whiteness the sagging fence line whispers, in tones I perhaps only imagine that I hear, that it won't be all that long before squash is on the vine, beans are on the bush, and roots, deeply reaching, are drinking in all the goodness they can find.

So let it snow.  The fence will keep me centered.