Every year I’m a little surprised when the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter on Feb. 2. It seems to me that would be a given since spring doesn’t technically begin here or in the U.K. — where I spent my first 49 springs — until March 20.
In England, where the winters are not as severe, that means delicate snowdrops are pushing up through the ground in January and tulips and daffodils are in abundance by the start of March. My experience here tells me I’ll be lucky to see so much as a weed by the end of February. The season starts so much later it’s hard to tell the difference between spring and summer.
All this may make you think Grumpy and I are keen gardeners, peering out of our snowy windows with pitchforks like the couple in the famous “American Gothic” painting. While that couldn’t be further from the truth, we do like a nice display of flowers. Since we moved to a townhome two years ago, things are much easier courtesy of a few ready-made gardening containers from Costco and the service we pay to keep everything tidy.
But life wasn’t always like that. Every spring I’m think back to the difficulties of maintaining our garden back in England. When we were growing our family as well as weeds, we moved into our first house in a London suburb. One of the things we liked best about it was that while the house was appreciably larger than our first apartment, the back garden was the same size and shape as a spreadable cheese wedge.
Since we hated yard work so much, you’d imagine Grumpy would have been happy to leave well alone but it just made him turn his attention to the front of the house. He decided we needed to frame the front door with two potted conifer trees. We’d been married for a couple of years by this point so I knew his limitations in gardening, decorating, cooking and pretty much any chore I might have wanted him to do but even he should be able to buy two trees and dump them outside a door.
Tree hunting became a hobby. We’d spend every Sunday at the local garden centers until we found exactly the right kind. The trouble was, when we did, they were so expensive we could only afford one.
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“Not to worry,” said Grumpy, who sadly has always been able to solve problems more slowly than he can create them. “We’ll get one now and the other next month when I get paid.”
We picked out the sturdiest looking tree we could find and wheeled it out to the car on a cart.
“This may be a bit tricky,” said Grumpy, cleverly noticing the tree was an inch taller than the car. “You’ll have to sit in the back. I’ll put this in the front.”
It was a strange sight to see the three of us sailing down the road. Grumpy in the front, me in the back and a 5-foot tree sitting with a seat belt on, waving its upper branches out of the sunroof. Once we reached the house, Grumpy heaved the tree — it looked amazingly good given the number of needles it left in the car — and hauled it out onto the path.
As promised, with the next paycheck came another tree. I must admit they looked pretty impressive, like two Grenadier guards standing tall outside our front door, just like Buckingham Palace. But not being gardeners, we didn’t think of one tiny detail.
“What’s happened!” cried Grumpy one morning as he stepped outside. Our lovely trees were shadows of their former selves. The think lush green leaves were a burnt sienna. They snapped off in your fingers leaving only a black parched skeleton beneath. And Halloween was still six months away.
“Do you think we should have watered them?” I asked. “I mean with all the rain I didn’t think we’d need to, but I suppose they are protected by the porch.”
“I guess, but it’s a bit late now,” said Grumpy, sadly picking through the crumbling pile of sticks in a pot.
We weren’t sure what to do with our burnt offerings. We really didn’t want to bury them on the compost heap or cremate them in a bonfire, so we just left them, somehow hoping the autumn rain would bring them back to life. That is, if the frost didn’t get to them first….
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved to Naperville from England in 2007.