This is nothing new; everybody knows that where you look matters. There are all those studies about hospital patients doing better when they can look out a nice window, students being kinder after staring at a tree. But let me also say this- that it's not a bad chore to thin the apples or the peaches, but I'd hate to thin strawberries. There's something to be said for standing tall, for looking up and out.

I thin apples like this: keep only the best of the cluster- bonus points if it's not scarred with a little moon of plum curcurlio. I thin peaches like this: say I'm leaving one plum every six inches, but often leaving more. The spongy moth caterpillars are everywhere in my neighborhood, and when I'm out thinning fruit, passersby presume I'm on a caterpillar hunt. I see plenty, and kill all I can. ​

Another thing you should know: it's cotton season. Not everyone likes summer. I didn't once, but now I do. I see this overhead on a road, and I think of what Whitman said about "divine things well envelop'd." First the the cotton in the trees, then more.

The grape vine keeps growing, looking for something to hold onto. A cardinal made a nest inside, right against the kitchen window. When I do dishes, she scowls at me, and I'm just happy to be there.

Right now, the best place in the garden is this place: the lettuce (kagraner sommer) I almost didn't plant, the dill that sowed itself, the cabbage that never amounted to anything last year, and might not amount to anything again. 

Sitting in the garden is very important. On a warm day, I like lying down even better. G.K. Chesterton wrote that essay about lying in bed that starts with "Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling." Lying in the vegetable garden is  a perfect and supreme experience. I used to mulch my paths with wood chips, but they're no good for this. Oak leaves are better, though they stick to your clothes and hair. A job isn't done until it's enjoyed.

I fought this grape vine for three years, then I stopped fighting. Now I love it. It's nice to look out at the kitchen sink through green leaves. I can see the little pear tree there, and the geranium planted at its base. I love that tiny geranium though it's no different from any of the other thousands of wild geraniums out this May. ​Walt Whitman asked Why  are there trees I  never  walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands in my blood?  These might be the only questions I care about.

​
On the way to my daughter's school, there's a square that's been cut out of a lawn, and in it, two purple pasque flowers are blooming. The square is probably six inches wide, just big enough for what it holds and no bigger. Gardens like this are some of my favorites. Are they gardens? I've been told that the words "guard" and "garden" are related, and that a garden should be about enclosure. Those pasque flowers aren't about enclosure at all. They're just a little present, tucked right up against the sidewalk.

​My own garden is looking less demure than those pasque flowers right now. It was hot last week, and everything grew dizzyingly fast. The lilacs that bloomed in the heat are all very pale, and so are the blossoms on the weeping crabapple tree in my front yard. They've always been the color of raspberry stain, but this year, they're a white froth, and I love them much more than I ever did before.

The potatoes are coming up. The strawberries are blooming. I've done so much less than I would hope to, but everything looks beautiful, anyway. And healthy and good and a bit riotous. The chives are full, and I've been cutting them by the handful to blend into a sludge with salt and oil. ​I put in another quince tree, and three cherry bushes, and three clove currents, and a struggling juneberry that is sprouting along its stems.

Speaking of riotous, a pair of catbirds is building a nest in the blue spruce outside my bedroom window. The way they sing is so jaunty and such a jumble. They talk and talk all morning, then talk and talk all evening. Every year I think about cutting down that spruce tree. But I love those catbirds.

This rabbit is building a nest under the gooseberry bush. She is not afraid of me. I left the tray of parsley in the garden overnight, and in the morning it was gone. Maybe we're frenemies. If so, she doesn't seem to know it, and the fact that she isn't afraid of me makes me soften toward her. Maybe a year without parsley is an alright thing. The bed is empty. We'll see what comes of it.

I planned to start the lettuces inside this year, but I planted potatoes in the garden, and then I planted some peas, and then some carrot seeds, and then cabbage, and then the lettuce went right in, too. Sometimes sowing seed is a chore, but nothing's a chore when it's April and the sun's out.

I pulled the bags of seeds that had been stratifying in the fridge and sowed those, too, but into flats. Shooting stars, river oats, odds and ends from a nearby prairie. I'm curious to see what will happen. Yesterday I met a couple who spent the last couple decades of their lives living deep in the woods, and now they live up on an open hillside and are trying to learn to love oak savanna. Something about it was kind of touching to me- the way they lived so intently in one place and then so intently in another.

Where there was a raised path, there now is a trench. When the ground was soft and green, the path seemed alright, but ice and rain show how the land lies. In this case, it lies low against the basement window. There are worse ways to learn than by getting things wrong.

It is nice to get your hands and feet in the ground in the ground again, no matter what the reason. I like to think about Antaeus, who compelled every stranger who passed to wrestle him and whose strength was renewed whenever he touched the earth. One character or another said that Dr. Zhivago was like Antaeus, but I can't remember who or if they were right. 

This week I clipped apple branches and brought them inside to see if they will blossom. I clipped black currant branches and stuck them in the ground to see if they will root. Uncertainty is a part of the deal and is part of what makes the garden good. Not all the ground was thawed enough for the black currant branches- plenty of patches were frozen just below the surface.

We'll be away for a week, and I hope when we get back the ground will be soft everywhere. Not for working, just for walking.

There are lots of good ways to live, and that's a nice thing. In warm places, winter is pleasant because everyone is still outside, there are greens in the garden, and there's heat to the sun. But I love winter here, too.

One of the best things about a cold-place winter is that it ends. The melting has started, here, and everyday I've been stomping around my yard seeing what's there. Last fall, I overwintered the kale by laying it flat and covering with oak leaves- it seems to be doing fine. The parsley under leaves seems pretty happy, too, but I'm not sure if that's because this variety (einfache schnitt 3) is hardier than the one I've grown before or because this was a milder winter. I'd rather think it was the good seeds.

Last year I overwintered four fig plants. This year I overwintered two. They're still dormant, and nights are warm enough to keep them outside. I brought them out two days ago, and the rabbits have already taken their share, but I'm feeling optimistic about the figs. It's easy to be optimistic when something's just beginning. I wish I had kept all four. Right now, it seems like there's room for everything.

The pomegranates aren't dormant. They started sprouting in the basement and are growing pretty happily, now, in a sunny window. They looked so ugly when they arrived in last fall, I didn't think they'd amount to anything; they had hardly any roots and were ready to give up for the year. They've surprised me. I've been surprised a lot this year, and that's something I'm grateful for.

Last year, I planted lots of flowers and grasses. I can't remember what. Some of it's written in a notebook, but most of it wasn't. I don't know what any of it will look like, and some things are probably all wrong (did really I plant senna hebecarpa in the front yard?) All the better.

All the better.

In one of his lectures, Roy Diblik asks how many plants we know that don't act like themselves. The answer is none, and I, acting like myself, cut my finger pruning the quince tree. I was using a saw when I should have used the pruners. I'm not sure I'll ever learn, and I don't really mind.

Seed-starting is a nice February chore, but pruning fruit trees is a delight. Each tree has its own way of growing, and each branch you take off is a suggestion. You respond to the tree, and the tree responds to you. No one talks enough about response. It's the thing that matters- everywhere, always.

The trees I don't prune this time of year are the mulberries and the peaches. Local advice is to prune peaches in late winter, but peaches tend not to live long here. Pruning peaches in spring, like they do in many places, seems more suited to their fast-growing, tender nature. Anyway, that's what I'm doing. I may be wrong.

I heard someone describe a newly pruned olive tree as looking like a bride. I don't know what that means, but I like looking at my trees* as they are now, ready for what comes next. And I like looking at the peach tree, too. It's rosy, limber, and fuzzy-budded: just what you'd think a peach tree should be. Even in February

*Except the quince tree- my pruning job there was a bit of a mess