Friday, January 6, 2012

Gardening: The Spirit of Water


A Waterhouse goddess of water, from whom all goodness flows. I could see myself in this part-time job, with a lofty-sounding title, like "Goddess of Water, Princess of all things Wet, Duchess of Rain, Deziden of Lands Oft-covered with Ice and Snow."

It's January, and it an incredible 45 degrees here, Even for a January thaw that's an incredibly mild temperature. I saw a small boy tapping a toe tentatively into the water running through a culvert by the driveway as he got off the school bus yesterday and it brought me immediately to thoughts of spring pass and myself as that small child testing the waters with a teasing toe.

As an adult, though, I've been trying to wrap my head around what these wonderful temperatures might have in store for us for the gardening year. Do they signify late snow of the wet and heavy sort with tulips in full flower sugared in snow crystals? Or will we have our snow in a series of 1/2" dustings, gone like morning dew? And will we have enough snow to feed the aquifer that runs clear, and clean deep underground bubbling up in an artesian spring north of town?


The fury of Niagara Falls is all too typical of the power, strength, and might of water.


The reflecting waters of a pool at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

So instead of ice, sleet, snow, rime, blizzards, freezing drizzle; we have gentle rains, cool running water in gullies half frozen, soggy looking lakes.

Will our weather be the like the water's fury at Niagara Falls or the placid calmness of the reflecting pool?

4 comments:

  1. I certainly hope that nature doesn't bury our tulips under drifts of snow in the spring, nor freeze the buds of our lilacs before their bloom.

    Unfortunately, as they say, "everyone talks about the weather, but. . . "

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  2. Welcome to Blotanical

    Un saludo

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  3. Nice to find another Wisconsin gardener. Here on the shores of Lake Michigan it is a little different than your area more like zone 5. Will be checking in with you. The photos on my Blog are all of my garden, you might like them. Jack

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  4. Water and its changing qualities. Yesterday lulled by the north sea flat as dish at sunset......last time it was a stamping roaring monster.

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