Just another quiet walk in the garden. I see it not as it is, but as it will be.

All blogs start somewhere, for some reason, I suppose. The tracks leading up to mine were made by years of writing about everything from garage sales to novels about the lives of weavers during the American Revolution to poems to, now, a new book about my first two years in the country and what I learned--and am still learning--from looking at the tracks I make in the world. I'm a perennial writer, journaling most days, working on other projects, too--and always reading. And a perennial gardener, too--not that I only grow perennials. It's just that the garden and the woodlands that surround mine, the birds and the animals that are part of this cycle, and the elements that make it go around are never far from my thoughts.

So what's blooming today? The first sixty degree day in Minnesota since November 6, 2008, that's what. Zone 4b is taking a bath in what looks like orange juice this morning, the sun pouring itself out on the horizon like a pool I just have to jump into. The snow still on the ground reminds me that when I jump, I'd better be wearing my Mukluks. But spring is out there, waiting to melt into me, and I know that what blooms in spring has been germinating in the winter of my life under all of that cold armor I wear. Or maybe it was already blooming last year and was just resting for a while--a perennial.

Perennials are among my favorites in the garden--so hardy, so dependable, requiring so little of me. Perennials want to please. Many of us under our armor have the need to please that paralyzes the rest of our lives. Perennials do it naturally, though not forever. Eventually they need to be pleased. They need to be divided, fertilized, deadheaded--or as I like to call it "freshened". Still, when spring sneaks up on me while I'm still making tracks in the snow, perennials are already getting ready to do what they do, not necessarily because of me but probably in spite of me. If I don't make tracks and cut down these scrubby looking phlox and filipendulas, they will just start growing without me. Well, who said there was anything wrong with gardening in Mukluks? I see the snow, but on my feet I see sandals.