Sure, it’s a milder winter than it ought to be, and maybe we’re running out of snowpack, and maybe we’ll pay for that this summer. Meanwhile, we can just look around and notice little moments day by day, attend to what’s happening in the sky and on the ground and in other people as they come along.

So first here’s an ordinary winter winter sight, some lace-like tall grass looking like frost flowers on a window pane:

Here’s another winter winter flower, some cheery rosemary growing out of the sidewalk.

But here’s an unexpected flower: daffodils in February?

And here’s another surprise, early in the season: some poisonous climbing vine Clematis armandii. It grows and takes over fences and walls all over town. I wouldn’t want toxic ornamentals on big messy vines in my own garden, but for one week a year it’s a nice elegant scent.

Lately the news, some of it sensational and distressingly scandalous, has gotten me down enough to bother my sleep and spirits. There’s not a thing I can do to solve any of it, and these scandals only call to mind frightening situations from my own past. Finally I resolved to turn off these sensational updates, and to shift focus on two other things instead.

The first was revisiting a sermon from last year by Father Seraphim Aldea. On YouTube it’s called “Bad thoughts and people? Don’t take the bait.” As usual, the sermon draws on the writings of the early Desert Fathers, to encourage the listener to “Keep engaged in your relationship with Christ and with prayer…. Try to discern if something good or bad serves your prayer, serves you in your journey towards Christ; if it nourishes prayer, if it nourishes love, if it nourishes a non-judgmental and forgiving and penitential repentant heart in you.” (It’s good to remember the Orthodox evening prayer asking God to protect us during the night from “vain thoughts, and from evil memories.”) Any ruminations waking or sleeping are better spent getting to know about Christ instead.

The second action was deciding here and now to open the garden patch for the year, as a little note of encouragement for the neighbors and our tiny world. This year the garden will be a memorial in particular for my own parents and the blessing and peace of their souls.

Well, it would be good to start with green peas. Why peas? They can be planted in the cold, and will even germinate if it’s snowy. They grow noticeably day by day; it’s entertaining for the passersby to watch them grow. They are good for the soil, they have nice white flowers, and we can eat not only the peas but the new tendrils as well. As a pleasant surprise, this year ‘s 2026 season pea seeds showed up at (of all places) Grocery Outlet. As time allows I can plant those perhaps even this week.

Then yesterday I hauled my clumsy self up on to the raised bed, both patches, and dug up several bowlfuls of the hardy greens still soldiering on from last season: kale, onion greens, kale, leeks, scallions, celery leaves, curly parsley, brussels sprouts. And yes, I can just leave them be; but I’d like to start fresh and create a new canvas for the new year. These greens made a strong nutritious broth for drinking, and also several meals of cooked mixed greens.

Then for the south patch I hacked at the top six inches of soil to loosen it up.

The north patch needed clearing and chopping too.

That yielded a new bowl of edible trimmings.

Next I called out for help to my former co-worker, trusty resourceful Sandrine. I asked her to drive me to the hardware store for dirt — specifically, organic soil mix for raised bed gardens. She very kindly showed up and drove me out for four bags, 30 pounds apiece. What’s more, she brought some spare stakes for my envisioned pea patch.

Today Sandrine and I tipped the soil bags out of her car to the ground near the raised bed. It’s an annual ritual: I cut open the bags, load handfuls of fluffy dirt into my bucket, and walk it around to spread across the garden beds. It takes about 40 trips to walk the soil around and spread it out.

Well, two neighbors (one girl in first grade, one boy just in nursery school) came running outside in great enthusiasm, all eager to help. They asked all about the bowl of edible trimmings, and what each plant was. After learning the names, the little guy bit right in to a bud tip of baby kale and happily chewed it up. (Next time I’ll tell him to wash his greens first, but he seemed happy with his kale foray.) The siblings asked permission to bring a sample of each vegetable to their mother. They scooped up handfuls of greens, and hollering with excitement went storming into the house to give the bounty to their mom, who is nursing a newborn and is likely to have little leisure to wash and sort these items. Still, it gave the kiddos a thrill to be symbolically bringing home the bacon.

In past years when they were smaller, they were pleased to ask oodles of questions, then would run off to explore further wonders of the world. But to my surprise, this time until their mom and dad called them in to go to the store, these energetic kiddos took buckets and trowels and worked on and on for one and a half hours! In 90 minutes we moved 90 pounds of dirt, scooping it all by hand and toting it in pots and pails. With their help, I had time to plant the primroses just in time before the sun set.

Here’s the south patch now, and the north patch.

It is an immense privilege to do this: to have money to buy the materials, to have a place to live and a little patch outside, to be able bodied enough to haul a clumsy toehold up on the raised bed, to have at least enough know-how and leisure to put these plants in the ground.

The forecast is rain on the way, and a chance of lowland snow. But outside there’s one extra bag of soil left. It would be nice to scoop some into pots and start a few seeds indoors. And meanwhile, even with strange news tugging at our attention every day, maybe God willing these flowers can stand for something cheerful.