There’s no need to wonder where Monticello is in winter. From almost any spot in town, Thomas Jefferson’s home is visible through the bare trees, just southeast of town, perched on a “little Mountain.” Everything’s in plain sight in our seasonally-transparent town:Â the old Coal Tower, the golden arches, and the bright playground of a distant school.
I often say that winter’s my least favorite season, so why am I so struck this year by its beauty? The cool blue moonlight on the back lawn, and the terse red cardinal on a scraggly shrub. Yesterday morning, I could have measured the exact angle of the sun breaking across my neighbor’s roof. Above the line was golden light, below it, sparkling frost.
“Don’t scrape it,” my daughter said today, pointing to an ice crystal on the back window as she climbed into the car. The symmetrical shape was National-Geographic perfect, a vanishing object of focus for the ride to school.
Outside, our barren garden boxes wait. Soon we’ll start seedlings inside. As novice gardeners, we’ll spend hours on the sofa researching hardy greens and cold-loving Cruciferae. We don’t know what we’re doing, but that’s nothing new. Such is the no-frills, bare-all beauty of winter. We put our heads down, read up, and plod through.
Cooking greens (hello, Aunt Lillian !), salad greens, root vegetables, peas, fava beans – all THRIVE in cool weather – the exiting and the entrancing kind of cool weather. YUM. When do we start ?