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| The garden says hello! |
The early months of 2011 were some of the coldest times I have ever experienced. It's quite rare in central New Mexico to get down to single digits, let alone way below zero, and yet we still got to experience some hideously cold weather. Many people suffered broken pipes and loss of water: many parts of NM even lost their natural gas supply because the cold knocked out the transport pumps in Texas. So overall, a very hard time for people. The plants suffered too.
I was very gratified to see that mostly my trees had survived the harsh winter. I did lose a few plants, but you know, that's the price of being a gardener. And then after the weirdly cold winter, we also had an unusually early and warm spring.
At the beginning of May, things were looking good. My trees and bushes had already flowered, and many had set fruit already. Too early, I know, and I feared that a frost would get them, but in general, I was optimistic.
We irrigated one day, and that night we had the first of two straight days of killing frost (temperatures in the low 20s). The plants lived through the first one, because we had a lot of standing water still on the ground, which protected them. But….. not the second night. My mulberry trees, the golden rain tree, the giant flowering crab apple tree next door -- lost all their leaves. All my blackberry bushes, the buddleias, the vitex, and the spanish broom died back completely to the ground. My poor plum trees, which had been absolutely full of sets, lost 100% of their fruit, as did the apricot and the cherry trees. It was a sad time.
However, by some miracle, the apples held onto their fruit, and they are growing well now. The blackberries came up from the roots, and the flowering shrubs are making an effort to come back as well. Last week when I was mowing the lawn, I saw that not only had the currants also managed to hang on, but they were RIPE!! (In the next few days, I was also gifted also with several bags of apricots, and the opportunity to go pick a tree's worth from a friend who will be out of town when they ripen. Hooray!!)
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| jewels among the greenery |
People who know me know that I am the Jam Queen. I am immortalized on the internet. (scroll through the uploads, he's made quite a few extolling my preserves) And so, how could I resist this opportunity for the first foray of the year into making preserves? I recently heard of a very elegant type of french currant preserve called Bar le Duc, which is supposed to make a wonderful dressing for game and fowl. So, I decided to forgo the usual recipes from the pectin box, and try this one out. It was described as a wine-red syrup with the berries suspended delicately in it -- well, mine did not turn out quite that beautiful, but it is delicious.
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| Bar le Duc, Los Lunas style |
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| mmmmmmm. apricot jam. a ray of sunshine all year long |
In picking the fruit, I was mindful of how harsh the winter had been, and amazed at how well the plants not only lived, but thrived. When plants are stressed, they can often respond with a flush of new growth. And yes, they may lose their fruit, but the plants themselves survive. What a good metaphor for how we as humans make it through the worst times of our lives. And yes, there are times and circumstances that do just completely kill a plant, and situations that completely demoralize a human. Some people, like some plants, just do not seem to have the resilience to rise again, and they remain stuck in bad situations, with bad relationships, unsuitable jobs, messed up families, until eventually this becomes their story.
We probably all know at least one of these people: the ones for whom nothing good ever happens (at least in their view). They are the ones who can suck the life out of a celebration because everyone else feels guilty for being happy while that person in present. The co-worker who can only complain and is envious of your every success; the 'friend' who cannot ever manage to find the right romantic partner and hates everyone you date; the person in your life who always is capable of making you feel bad about anything you do, just so they can feel superior to you; the unfortunates who travel continually under a little black cloud that rains disaster on them all the time. They may be lugubrious people or cheerful despite their circumstances, but for whatever reason, they continually attract the worst, maybe because they expect the worst…. or feel that they don't deserve anything better than the worst. And often they don't want you to feel good either.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not speaking here of people who suffer from legitimate mental illnesses, such as depression, or PTSD. Those are medical conditions in which the body/mind become stuck in a chemical feedback loop which can indeed necessitate medical intervention to halt the cycle and change it. As a survivor myself of a long and suicidal clinical depression, I do understand how devastating these conditions are. I am speaking here of the people around us who want to drain our happiness from us.)
As long as a person is alive, they have the possibility to make change. We have so many opportunities to make choices every day, from what to wear, what to eat, who our friends are, how much energy to put into any effort we make, and most of all how we respond to the world and to the people around us. We are the creators of our lives, and we always have the choice to act positively, and re-act to external situations in ways that help us instead of hurt us, to find opportunities to learn in trying circumstances, and to be appreciative of what we do have. It is our own choice to be a victim or a survivor.
We can respond to stress negatively by remaining stuck, or we can respond positively -- with a flush of new growth. Think of Henri Matisse, who responded to his increasing blindness by changing media and making his collages. Many cancer survivors write books or find other bursts of creativity. Not to forget Beethoven, writing his 9th symphony when completely deaf. (or me, your humble blogger, who in coping with the painful wreckage of my marriage and divorce, decided to write...)
Be strong. Be resilient. Learn from your experiences. Come back from the roots. Be a force for good. Be love.
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