Rewind

Welcome to the first edition of Rewind for 2025. Once a month I share a visual essay capturing images I’ve taken over the last few weeks, with a few bonus images included from the archives. Heavy on pictures, light on words, Rewind offers a perspective on the world of gardening (and life) through still photography.

New in 2025, Roots & Vines now includes subscription-only access to monthly poems. Rewind and the monthly observational essay will remain free to all subscribers, but if you’re looking for more content, particularly in poems and photography, consider adding a monthly subscription.

I garden in Zone 5, so growing during winter months includes indoor seed starting, winter sowing, and floral arranging. January is the month I prepare materials to start the summer garden, such as cleaning pots and seed mats, inventorying my seed collection to determine if I have everything I want to grow this year, designing the outdoor garden beds on paper, cleaning up the seed propagation area in my basement, and checking on tubers/bulbs (dahlias, canna lilies, and calla lilies) resting in a cool, dark place to make sure none of them have started rotting.

Strawflowers are one of my favorite warm-weather annuals to grow outdoors because they grow prolifically and retain their color all season long. They also have a magnificent feature: strawflower petals are firm and crisp, which means they make a delightful plucked sound when you strum their flower heads. If you dry the blossoms, the petals soften and lose their noise over time, but the colors remain saturated for months. These dried flowers were cultivated and harvested in September, 2024.

It starts in November, just as I put the outdoor gardens to bed for winter. While my memories of gardening are fresh, and before certain seed varieties sell out, I always purchase next season’s seeds from seed catalogues. I usually purchase another round of seeds in February when I start sowing seeds indoors, because who doesn’t love receiving seeds in the mail when it’s only 10 degrees F?

Earlier this month I spoke to a local garden club about cultivating a cut flower garden and it was such a delightful experience preparing and sharing thoughts about harvesting flowers for design projects. I could have added a whole section about using houseplants in bouquets, too. If you’re going to prune the branches to maintain a clean shape, you might as well put the trimmings to good use. Pictured above: dwarf umbrella tree.

I’m on the hunt to expand my flower vessels. I’ve started collecting milk glass, but only in shades of blue, pink, and jade. I’d love to add more blue and white containers to my collection, even re-purposed household items like this cream pitcher, because January flowers, even those purchased at the store, look great in dark blue. Must be something about the pull of blue from snow piled high outside, inky early morning light, and the promise of fresh colors just on the spring horizon.

Every year I render my flower gardens in watercolor to plot out where I’ll grow certain flower and food varieties and to think intentionally about companion planting. The watercolor renderings are only for me; they set the stage for summer’s gardening season.

More dried strawflower. See what I mean about its color? That’s the mellowest yellow butter color I’ve ever seen on a flower. (And yes, that’s a wee seed clinging to the edge of a softened petal).

I’m celebrating one year of selling my botanical photographs online. It’s a modest milestone, but keeping memories of past bouquets with me through photography, including this piece featuring assorted cosmos, brings me great joy. I swap out the images each season. This particular snapshot ushers in February, the season of Valentine’s Day and extended daylight.

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Thanks for reading this month’s visual essay. Leave a comment to let me know what flower or food you can’t wait to grow in this year’s garden.

I’ll be back next week with a new poem.

-Betsy