Hoarfrost and Castle Gardens
In February of 2003, Kit and I were living at Breakfast Creek. One bleak gray day, I exchanged weather news via email with my friend Ollie in Washington DC. “My God but it’s chilly and grim hereabouts these days!” he complained. Feeling the same way, I replied, “Here, too. I’m so ready for a change of scenery and season!”
As if reading my mind that day, the weather surprised me when temperatures reached 50 degrees by late afternoon. I was delirious. Our barn cats leaped like kittens, and the geese and ducks grazed about the pasture like spring lambs. Then it snowed again in the night, and morning awoke wearing a gray face, prompting me to send Ollie a weather update. “The precious warm breezes of yesterday may reach you this afternoon,” I told him. “If they do, leave your office immediately and stand outside for as long as you can, soaking up the sun’s warmth. More snow is on the way.”
On a walk around the pond at Breakfast Creek later that morning, I stop for awhile on a bench Kit had made from an old slab of marble. It wasn’t long before Fat Uncle Mellow and Scooter Boots, two of our venerable barn cats, found me and parked in my lap. The sky was as white as the fresh dusting of snow on the pond’s still frozen surface.
I imagined the entire canopy of cedars and mixed woods around the pond coated with a fine dusting of white. Humidity suddenly frozen, dew captured as delicate ice crystals. The result a wintry landscape of trees encased in a web of frozen confection. “This,” I told the cats nestled up against my wool coat, “is a spectacular phenomenon even more brilliant than its spring cousin dew. “This,” I explained, “is hoarfrost.”
The prior day’s balmy temperatures and late afternoon humidity condensed on our windshield as we drove north to Columbia just before dark that night. We had expected rain in the night, only to awaken to a world that was once again white. “This is February,” I whispered to the sleeping cats. “Winter is far from over.”
At the time, I was reading a worn copy of Leonard Hall’s “A Journal of the Seasons on An Ozark Farm” and had turned to his chapter on February. Hall begins by describing February as a season of gray landscapes and sharp winds “that have a knack of searching out vulnerable spots in even the warmest clothing.”
Heading to the barn to feed the cats and our flock of geese and ducks the next morning, I experienced the chilling winds I had just encountered on the page. Back in the warmth of our kitchen, I wondered what else February had in store? For the answer, I returned to Hall’s country journal.
“February is, in many ways, a season of frustration on the farm. There comes a spell of warm weather when the ground dries up and we make a start of any of a dozen tasks.”
Yes, I thought to myself. By now some have already started seeds indoors and planted peas in their outdoor gardens. Everyone who has gardened or farmed for long in this part of the country knows that warm February days will be followed by rain or snow and temperatures that will drive them back inside before long.
What do gardeners and farmers do then? It is a perfect time, I tell myself to spend hours by the fire poring over seed catalogues and planning spring gardens. Beginning early in January, they arrive each week with increasing regularity. Each arrival is added to the collection until a warm breeze in February tickles my gardening fancy, and I realize it is time to get serious about ordering seeds.
The first to arrive that winter was “The Cook’s Garden” catalogue—seeds and supplies for the new American family garden. I made notes to order “Halloween in Paris” and “Rouge Vif d’Etampes” heirloom French pumpkins—ideal for pies and soups. I also ordered a French heirloom snow pea called “Carouby de Maussane”—sweet edible pea pods that follow a display of exquisite purple flowers (pois mangetouts the French call them)—and one each of the summer, fall and winter lettuces.
As I daydreamed that day about spring gardens, I suddenly found myself transported to a magnificent English garden. Leafing through a magazine, I’d come upon a drawing of Sisinghurst Castle garden in Kent—the garden created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson in the 1930s and now maintained by England’s National Trust. Its name is Saxon, meaning ‘clearing in the woods’. There are ten separate gardens with relic moats, a nuttery, a lime walk, and yew hedges that separate them.
On cold February days all these years later, I find myself dreaming of sunny days that warm the spirit and stir life back into our now dormant gardens at Boomerang Creek. And I recall images of hoarfrost and English castle gardens from years past that are still fresh in my mind.