I

Dark.

Dreary.

January days.

Days of leaden skies, of sleet and snow flurries, day after day, depressing days of winter. Layers of heavy woolen clouds blanket days without sunlight, murky gray days from morning until late afternoon when the gray gets darker.

"As the days grow longer," my grandmother used to say, "the cold grows stronger." And so it does. Cold gray January days, on and on without end, bleak days, one after another, when juncos seek shelter deep in the old rhododendron outside my kitchen window, huddling among its leaves curled tight as a child's cold fingers inside a mitten, and squirrels stay snuggled in their tree-trunk nests, their tails wrapped around them like winter scarves.

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Excerpted from Gardening in Eden: Seasons in a Suburban Garden by Arthur T. Vanderbilt
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