Blog? Yes, this was a blog once.

I admit ... I don't have anything to say. Like many gardens in North America to the east of the rockies, my garden is all snow at the moment. Deep in the stuff, which is falling, rain-like from the sky even as I type this.

However, I do wish to return to being a blogger. It does make one a more active gardener (the pressure of needing to have something to write about is strong). It also might eventually (if I ever edited) make one a better writer. And the only way to be a blogger is, well, to blog.

I went to California last week (as one does) and there, the cherries were blooming and the beard irises were maybe even not too far from finishing. I was very impressed. I can't imagine trying to figure out how to garden in a new climate. I mean, at first, when I finish digging out the 2 feet of snow before getting on an aeroplane to the other side of the continent, what I think is: WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE LIVE HERE? But I know that in August, it can be continually cold where I was. And that it can go for months without raining. And that it can get to be too hot, for weeks on end. And then I try to imagine what it would be like to work out when to plant what. And, indeed, what I would have to give up.

Things like tulips, maybe. They grow naturally in the dry mountains of Khazakstan. They need hot, dry weather after blooming (not really something I can provide in my Atlantic garden) but they also need a cold, dormant period.

I couldn't possibly give up tulips. I have been reading Anna Pavord again and the result is that I am coveting more gardening space. I am not sorry to live in this land of real winter. It doesn't trouble me that I cannot grow palm trees in my garden. It doesn't trouble me that in January there is no possibility of gardening (unless I feel like putting in a greenhouse, which I do, but for which I lack funds). But it does trouble me that I don't have a garden. I have a strip of dirt between my house and the sidewalk and it brings me joy. I do not have a place to go and meditate on the passing of the seasons. I do not have a space in which to putter away mild spring evenings, worrying about the health of the pampas grass.

Some day, I think I will have such a thing. And I will neglect it terribly when it needs attention, just as I do my tiny strip. That's what inconsistent gardening is all about.