February 6, 2014

After heavy night rains, I assumed the deep freeze of the previous week would have yielded, and so it had. I sunk my father’s spade into the old garden and dug up the golden tree peonies and one great white heron iris. I knew and loved the peonies over many years. The iris I just planted last fall and have never seen in bloom, but the name is so intriguing I want to.  I dug them out of the east-facing yard of the old house and planed them in the south-facing yard of the new one. The soil seems rich and loamy, with a generous portion of sticks and chunks of wood from who knows what event.

In the evening I’m afflicted with terrible muscle spasms.  I don’t think it’s the gardening, solely. I’d worked out at the gym after a hiatus. Maybe it was that. Maybe I hadn’t drunk enough water. The muscles tighten in waves, from the sides, working over into the belly where it’s particularly excruciating, and difficult to breath through the pain and the tightness. My reaction is rage, fighting the cramps as though they were an adversary with cowardly tactics and a grip like iron.

I think of my old garden. I can’t take everything. Which dry stalks are the peonies I love, and which are likely survive a transplantation in the dead of winter? I cough and the spasm returns. I scream with rage, and the cough returns. I determine that this could go on all night before I yield. I do, however, yield enough to gulp down as much water as I can stand. A little more than that, actually. I sit very straight, so as not to give the spasms a curve or a bunch to work from. I regret that it is dark again, a windy winter dark, and all thoughts of the garden are purely theoretical.

Peach Moscato at Avenue M amid night wind. Bliss.