Reflections

 I have been working for several months now on a compilation of my gardening columns from the Petoskey MI News Review. Entitled Through the Gardener's Year, the book of essays has been forcing me to rethink what it means to live the gardening life year-round, to bloom wherever we are planted.
Spring, I've come to appreciate,  is not just about a date on the calendar. Context matters. Without an anchoring sense of place, time in a garden ceases to have any true meaning.
After a lifetime living and gardening in the Midwest and on the East Coast, moving to a Tempe, AZ

Columbine - April
Phoenix Botanical Garden,

 

area code for much of the year has changed my perspective of what seasons mean to a gardener. Right now in Northern Michigan, ice still shrouds large expanses of Little Traverse Bay.  In the desert Southwest, the fallow winter months are long past.  'Spring', aka summer elsewhere in the country, annuals are already past their prime as temperatures creep toward the triple digits.
The desert is anything but a barren place. Heat and water set the time for cactus to bloom.  Sage has its own season for flowering. And then when and where I least expect it, I find one of my favorite 'Midwest' spring beauties thriving in a desert wildflower garden as mounds of Columbine create a lush carpet in a shady spot.
Change of scene is good for a gardener. It forces us to rethink the rhythms and parameters of the day to day. Wherever we find ourselves, gardening is not about permanence, but change.  Seasons come and go, a familiar and reassuring pattern. Yet woe betide us if we discount the capacity to challenge and surprise.
Like life, it seems. In the garden, it is all about the instinct to grow.