Winter Dreaming

I came across another writer’s musings for the new year and found unexpected inspiration in her call for January to be a month of dreaming. I rather like this forecast for early winter — a month spent proclaiming dreams, in a swirl of fresh, new possibilities.

I’m not much interested in resolutions. But dreaming seems new and strangely right for early days in a new year. I have yet to start indoor sowing seeds, but I can dream about what my summer garden will look like. I have few commitments for 2024, but I can conjure possible adventures and revel in creativity, even newly formed ideas not quite ready for public attention.

January dreams are built from last year’s shadows, when dwindling daylight in late November meant by 5:30, I walked toward the garden beneath a starlit sky. I knew then that closing another year would lead to finding steady comfort in quiet corners of early winter. Pungent colors, simple and clean lines, ordinary, orderly — these things defined months nestled at year’s end, before growing season returns.

I welcome early darkness because it offers generous space to contemplate and reflect. Dreaming for a new month, a new year, and a new garden on the horizon might look like this:

I wish the peonies were still in blossom, that Queen Anne’s lace still filled the gentle slope at the back of the yard with chaste white florets, swaying in the wind. I long for one more thick bouquet of flowers, cultivars and natives alike, to grasp in my hands as I walk back up the house before sunset. I’d nuzzle the silky petals and pinch the turgid green stems as I placed them in a glass vase.

I know the gardens need a rest, and so do I. But my days are contoured around flowers — it’s how I fold gardening into my summer life. So to turn toward other adventures, to leave growing behind for a while, sure stings.

I might weep. I might sit quiet and catatonic for a while. I might stare out the windows trying to figure out what “instead” looks like, now that cold winds and grey afternoons have arrived. I’ll practice saying good bye a thousand times until I can hello again. My winter dreams contain peonies and Queen Anne’s lace and pretty cottage flowers ready for a simple arrangement.

Snow has not yet accumulated on January lawns. Nearby lakes still boast open waters. I even spotted misty fog hovering above a small pond last week. Yet, I continue to dream of warmer months, of a time when I can wrap a dark blue blanket over my bare shoulders at 5:15 am, its cotton fringe dangling near my elbows, and slip outside into the inky morning just before dawn. In this daydream, I listen to roads sing with heavy long-haul trucks wheeling across the tar. Perhaps a lone cricket chirps in fragile bursts.

I sit beneath a string of golden lights strung haphazard between trees. No sunlight. No movement in the yard. No birds singing yet, but mufflers and car doors and truck horns soften around loud toads humming like a choir.

The fresh morning air settles on the tip of my nose; my eyes adjust to weakened light. I hold my coffee cup in the crook of my elbow, its warmth bleeding through the blanket and settling on my forearm. I wonder if I can stay in this liminal moment between sleep and awake, dawn and daylight, pleasure and work, forever.

I know this dream will last only as long as I sit perfectly still amongst the damp hostas and sullen maple trees turning from green to gold.

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-Betsy