How To Beat The Winter Blahs.....Part 1

The difference in yesterday and today is like night and day. Yesterday we woke up to a frosty, foggy day that stayed bone-cold all day. It was pretty to look at but not to be IN. I came in to a hot, home-cooked breakfast and was thankful to see the perky, red blooms of my geraniums. I don't know how I got through previous winters whithout these delightful plants! Nothing denotes the look of home and garden more than geraniums. I love their light scent as much as I love their red petals. This is just the elixer I needed to get through a very blah day.

I purchased six potted plants last spring and two adorable geraniums that went in pots on either side of our entry way. Sadly these, with pretty pink petals, became fodder for the renegade goat (the same goat that ate my tomato plants not once, but three times). Being the frugal person I am, I was not going to let $60 worth of geraniums die with the first frost. No sir! At $10 per plant, I was not going to loose money by forgetting about them in the cold. I brought them in, trimmed them up, added soil to their wind/weather damaged appearance and made a nice home for them on the little red kitchen cart. The cart is the best storage device I have right now. If I put the squash in the pantry, I tend to forget they are there. I don't have a root cellar and our downstairs storage room is already full and a little on the warm side for root vegetables. The cart was an impromptu effort to keep the plants off of the floor. I'd taken two of the plants downstairs but with the wood stove and dry heat they weren't fairing well. Add the fact that they weren't being watered with half-full supper glasses and shrivel starts to happen.

I'd had the idea of hanging them in our south facing window, and again, space is limited so we added hooks to get them off the small cart. That brings the count to three on hooks, two on the cart and one in my bathroom, which also gets fair amount of sun during the day. I took this photo after the "hanging" and it brought a smile to my face. I now have a reminder of the past summer and the one to come; I'll take these back to their spots on the front of the house, garden shed, back door and chicken coop. I also have to say it was quite refeshing to take in the brilliant red petals on a very grey day. It was as if summer was just around the corner. And then......this morning........ an early spring appeared! Now I know that this is just a teaser, but I'm fine to be had in this way. It has been a most, sunny, glorious, WARM day and I've soaked it in. I remember now that I miss the chirp of birds and other sounds of spring time. It's challenging to describe, you just KNOW the energy of spring, that fresh, upward rising energy. Ahhhhhh!

So if you are finding the winter days a bit too harsh, I highly recommend bringing bright, living blooms into your space. We can't make winter go faster but we can find ways to infuse spring/summer within each day.