Hope under ice
Seeding spring in Prague
“Hope is the thing with feathers.” That quotation was in the air last month on the American poet Emily Dickinson’s 195th birthday. It was a timely reminder of, as she wrote, “the Little Bird that kept so many of us warm.”
Personally, I side with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, who famously professed his love for “the sticky little leaves as they open in the spring.” All my life, I have traipsed through snowy woods, seeking out and counting the little signs of spring—the magnolia buds, sprouting snowdrops and crocuses that push the snow aside. These things touch my melancholy core and reassure me that better things are on their way, despite everything.
These days, my sanctuary is my urban terrace garden in northeastern Prague. I spend many of the fleeting winter daylight hours walking among my snow-covered pots, searching for green things searching for the sun. Each November, I carefully clear out a dozen or so terracotta pots and stuff them with tulip and daffodil bulbs. Among tulips, I’m partial to the creamy peaches and apricots of unruly cultivars like Charming Lady. My taste in daffodils runs to small, multi-headed varieties that emerge in little groups and gossip with each spring breeze. The show each spring is enough to keep my heart full and dancing through the next sunless winter.
This year, I didn’t. I tell myself I was too busy or too ill to plop the bulbs in their beds and stow them under my potting bench for the winter. But now, with the January snow blanketing the ground and dark clouds hanging motionless for days and weeks, I’m not so sure. I think something deeper kept me from planting my tulips this year. Some spirit of resignation, perhaps, or just something broken.
Soon I will pay the price, most likely. If a warm day comes and the soil thaws, I will still try to put the bulbs out into the crisp winter air and see if nature will forgive my faithlessness.
As dawn draws streaks of pink on the bottoms of black clouds, I walk my terrace domain with my steaming mug. My eyes trace the insane patterns of pigeon tracks in the snow. And I wonder if spring will come this year and, if it does, what will it bring?
Turning inside, I notice a single green sprout popping up through the ice. And a second and a third. Bulbs I seeded in less heavy years, it seems, have not forgotten me. A blue tit at the feeder cracks a seed and, as the poet wrote, warms my heart.
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The image of skipping the bulbs this year but finding old ones still pushing through hits different than most hope metaphors. I dunno if its the honesty about resignation or just how gardens kinda outlast our moods, but this captures something real about how resiliance isn't always about fresh starts. Had a similar moment last fall when perennials I'd forgotton about came back stronger than anything I'd planned.