The Attack of the Dreaded Farch

Carolyn Gail of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago started us off with Garden Bloggers Muse Day a while back, and I"ve been contemplating whether to post today or tomorrow. Since in most years this would be March 1st, I figure today is as good a time as any.

“April,” we are told by the great poet TS Eliot in his epic poem The Waste Land, “is the cruelest month, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

Much as I love Eliot, he’s all wet on this one. That’s because he never endured the interminable attack of the dreaded Farch in Nova Scotia.

Farch, you say? What the heck is a Farch?

Farch is what some people know better as the months of February and March. But because they are interminable, obnoxious, and downright unpleasant, I tend to roll them into one loooonnnnnggggg month and call it Farch. And I like it just about as much as I like goutweed (and people KNOW how much I detest that justly-maligned plant.) This year, of course, Farch is even longer, thanks to today being a Leap Day. Like Carol at May Dreams Garden says, it would be nicer to have that extra day at a nicer time of the year, although those of us in the southern Hemisphere probably think that an extra late-summer day is just fine.

We've had the full meal deal of winter weather tantrums in the past couple of months, that's for sure. I don’t mind the cold or the snow. It’s the grey. Grey skies, grey landscapes, grey pavement and heaps of grey snow, more grey skies. Days the sun is out, no matter if it’s 40 below, I’m okay with it. But I’m starting to get impatient to be grubbing in the dirt, bringing home new ‘groceries for the garden’ in the form of plants and more plants and accents and garden art and mushroom compost...pruning and cleaning up and making new beds and hardening off seedlings and doing all those other wonderful things that we do.

It's still too early to plant most seedlings indoors here, because they can't be transplanted outside until at least May, unless I decide to put something in the greenhouse for supplemental heat. I did sow a bunch of catgrass, to keep the cat-children from chewing on my houseplants. And while I didn't get that azalea I talked about, the orchid show is tomorrow and Sunday, and we do plan to trek into Halifax for a bit of that. So who knows what might get to come home with us?

And despite reading all kinds of other blogs, I'm just beginning to feel really bludgeoned by the weather. I want to see this sight in my own garden.


I'd even welcome seeing this, snow and all:


Of course, I’ve been pushing back the greys by keeping busy with work, reading all kinds of new books, browsing through catalogues and magazines and websites, and tending the plants here in the house. They tell me that spring will come, as they’ve started to wake up from their resting period and put on new growth. And if it weren't for all of you posting about your gardening adventures or plans, and taking part in the Garden Bloggers Geography Project, I'd be even more winter-beaten. Thanks to all of you who have done posts for the project, and I'll be doing a wrapup over the weekend.

Okay, you've talked me out of being gloomy. Maybe we’re only midway through Farch. But just writing about gardening makes me realize that soon it will be time to be outside getting ready for another season’s floral promises and memories. And tomatoes.