Wake Up!

"Waken! my people, to the boughs green

With ripening fruit within you!

Waken to the myriad cinquefoil

In the waving grass of your minds!

Waken to the silent phoebe nest

Under the eaves of your spirit!"
William Carlos Williams, The Wanderer (1914)

While winter snow blankets New England and tornados rage through Florida, Spring has arrived in my backyard. I’m ready to hit the garden to plant my seeds and prune the frost-killed branches. The bees are waking up, the irises are blooming, and even the calls of the mourning doves seem happy. I see birds – hawks, doves, thrushes and humming birds – cavorting in the sky two by two. The overwintering migratory tourist birds have gone and the local birds have begun ignoring feeders and noticing bugs and the flowers. Wild mustard covers the hills in swaths of pale yellow, and my seedlings are stretching their roots through the paper pots and leaning into the sun. Birds have to hunt, but plants make their own food.

My quilt of winter root vegetables is done. I had more success indoors than out this year with root crops. My onions and shallots outdoors have yet to flower and ripen.

The stone path winding through my quilt has been hand-embroidered “Garden with attitude” an intentionally ambiguous statement that may be advice or may be the name of the quilted garden of winter root vegetables. The fact that they're "mental" pleases me because I so frequently exhibit such attitudes as "beet it" beet and redlight radish.

Leeky, has been embellished with ribbon stalks and root tassels to emphasize that I clearly know Nature less the more I try to grow vegetables with attitude. The vegetables are fabric available from AnthroPoMorphCo.etsy.com. The back of my quilt includes the url as well as the peintws name of this pattern: "Make your own Friend! ...stuffed vegetable edition". I stuffed one set and made the quilt from another set.

For a while I’ve been too tired to blog. Now, suddenly, I have energy, and I’m too busy to blog. My winter activities of making cozy quilts, fermenting sauerkraut, and canning lemon lavender marmalade no longer entice me. The sunshine and the millions of shades of green are reaching beneath the eaves of my spirit and reminding me that I need Vitamin D and dirty fingernails.

I need the slow stretching exercise of garden work to relieve my winter-cramped muscles. The air is soft and it smells green. It’s time to sow my seeds and refresh my mind and body by working in the garden.