Merry & rainy

The extraordinarily dry autumn has ended abruptly — with eleven straight days of rain.

The valley is thick with fog each day, only clearing in the few hours around noon. To the west, the typical trickle of a stream is now a rush. When I come home at night, mist shrouds the ridge behind the house, bleeding into the silvery twilight, diffusing the normally hard line between land and sky. Sunset falls fast and early. This is December.

I use a headlamp to harvest kale, chard, spinach, arugula or broccoli for dinner. Although wet, the winter has been mild so far. Three raised beds have been converted to hoop houses for the winter, but so far they and the cold frame have been left open to the rain. The hoop houses have been planted with vegetables we intend to harvest over the course of the winter. The cold frame is planted with vegetables that will sloooooowly grow through the winter months and be ready to harvest in March — when winter greens are gone but spring-sown greens aren’t mature yet. This weekend, the hoop houses and cold frame will close as the temperatures drop.

When I turn into the driveway, the soft white light of the Christmas tree gleams through the window. On either side of the door hang homemade evergreen swags — pine, privet, blackberry leaves, dried sedum heads and flower stalks. The first package of next year’s vegetable seeds leans against the door, where the postman kindly left it out of the rain.

Inside, beeswax candles glow on the mantle and the table. A pot of water scented with cinnamon and cloves simmers on the stovetop. A poinsettia blooms by the hearth, amid the green of pothos and various succulents, as well as a banana and vanilla vine. A white cyclamen on the dining table is reminiscent of snow. Paperwhites and amaryllis will bloom within the week. Outside, dreary. Inside, cheery.

The jewel garden has a gap that will need to be filled next year — nothing is blooming (or particularly pretty) in December. I intend to plant a cornus shrub or two, perhaps a holly or a beautyberry, as well as hardy cyclamen, bergenia and winter heather. It looks like the camellia I planted this year will bloom in January. The witch hazel, forsythia and winter jessamine won’t be far behind, blooming in February.

The saffron crocus has just stopped blooming, and other early spring bulbs — crocus, reticulated iris, muscari — are pushing green leaves up from their pots. They will begin the spring bulb show next year, followed by daffodils, tulips and bearded iris. But now, most of the color has gone. Only the pansies are still pumping out flowers in shades of blue and purple.

Inside the greenhouse, seedlings of biennial flowers and herbs are happily growing. I’ve just potted on verbena bonariensis, mugwort and honesty, and rudbeckia and echinacea will be ready to pot on by the end of the month. Cuttings of ivy, salvia and rosemary rest on a side counter, where they are (hopefully) slowly forming roots and will be ready to plant out in the spring. I’ll sow sweet peas in January, as well as some additional flowers that need a longer lead time before our last frost. Most of the seed-starting will begin in early February.

For the rest of December, I’ll be cozied up under blankets, poring over seed catalogs, and dreaming of snow … with lots of green to follow.