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A Cold Perspective

2/10/2011

3 Comments

 
Picture
Pasque Flower
Everything seems harder in the frigid cold.  Oh wait - everything is harder in the frigid cold.  Flaws in the systems rear their ugly heads and remind us of all the things we don't have done or fixed or figured out.  The stuff we push back to the corners of our over-used brains because we cannot deal with them today start to appear on the windows just like jack frost - peering in at us so we can't forget.  
No shower today - the super cold penetrated up through the floor to freeze just one section of the tub drain.  It's a good thing my hairstyle is officially 'bedhead' - and that Cord likes me anyway. 
Which brings me to the next point.  Why does it have to feel like it will always be this way?  I am fully aware of a week of warm weather before us - and yet - the frigid has a hold of me.  It has a hold of my house and the horses and the morning too - hey - it has a hold of my perspective!  My perspective is not cold - my Penn colored glasses won't allow for that - it' s warm and sunny and - hopeful.  
So why does the cold hold me like a frigid cloud of woe?  
Perennials need cold to trigger them in spring.  An apple tree can't bear unless it gets winter time.  Cold is responsible for Penstemons, snow is responsible for spring wildflowers.  
Finally we have a little snow - with days of melting ahead.  A Colorado rebound is before us and all of these thoughts will melt on the window with the morning ice crystals.  I will wonder at how warm it is in between storms in Colorado - I'll be running to vent over-heating greenhouses - and the perspective will be that the warm will never end - that spring is coming, that it will never change.  Until tomorrow and I look at the forecast.  
But for a few days - my cold perspective will be pushed back into the corners of my over-worked brain as I work outside in my tank top, test soil for thawing under the hoops and plant the house full of seedlings.  
If only I could change my perspective as quickly as Mother Earth changes her mind.  I wonder if she laughs at my relentless gullibility.
Picture
Wild, Snow-Grown Penstemons
3 Comments

    Author

    Penn Parmenter is a high altitude gardener, seedswoman and student of the earth.  She is married to Cord Parmenter - an awesome gardener, gorgeous man and a master blacksmith. Together they own and run a sustainable greenhouse design company, Smart Greenhouses LLC and Penn grows seed for her seed business, Miss Penn's Mountain Seeds.  She is a mother of three sons and an outdoorswoman.  Penn forages wild food, hunts big game, fishes, preserves, maintains a huge organic forest garden and occasionally makes dinner.  At home you can find her in her greenhouses as well as in the wilderness - nose to the ground, butt in the air, trying to identify Colorado natives.    

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