Compassion warms when frost covers the garden

Oh, what one easily forgets in winter!

When the bitter cold sets in, when hunkering around the wood stove’s fire is the favorite pastime, when shoveling, shoveling, shoveling to be free from snow is considered “fresh air and exercise,” the mind enters a sort of warped state and conjures inexplicable notions.

Notions like “I feel sorry for the deer.”

Did I just say that? Am I the same person who went practically mad last summer trying to keep those naughty beasts away from my beets, carrots and hollyhocks? Was I the one who swore vengeance on them and all their progeny to my dying day?

I don’t think so! Not me!

Well, yes, yes. Now that I think about it, yes, I think I did all that. But I can’t really see how I possibly could have been so vehement. Not in winter.

In winter I’m compassionate.

I worry about the deer when it’s 20 below zero. I don’t know how they can possibly make it. I worry about the turkeys, too. Although, now that I think about it, I do have the rather vague recollection of running after a flock, waving my fan rake in a maniacal fashion after they tore through my garden in summer, dusting themselves in carefully crafted, newly formed beds. Even so, I feel sorry for them as they wander about in the cold now, pecking at the gravel road and scratching – pointlessly, it seems – at the rain-hardened snow. There’s just not a scrap of fruit left on any of the barberries, roses or autumn olives around. The acorns are frozen in the snow; the beechnuts are buried, as well.

Poor turkeys.

Even our cats are a smidgen put out by winter. One could say our lovable Harry is something of a feline gardener. In summer he digs with his pretty white paws under the English valerian plants in the garden, nibbling on their tranquility-inducing roots.

After a moderate indulgence, he sacks out in the sun for a long, deep nap.

In winter, however, with no valerian to tend, he sniffs around the patio where his catnip plant grew in a pot by the back door. Faithfully, he sits for a few moments by the untended, frozen pot. He must be remembering in his little kitty mind those blissful summer days of carefree gnawing and chewing on the minty stems.

On sunny days, Harry sits on the windowsills in the southern-most room in the house, looking wistfully out the window at the songbirds sunning themselves in the ash tree in the yard. And those songbirds, I feel the most sorry for those bitty creatures! On warm days the chickadees sing their spring-mating song. Are they out of their little minds? Don’t they know they still have a good two months to go before they’re really free of winter?

Their hopeful song is so inspiring it makes me want to cry. How can they be so optimistic?

That’s it, isn’t it? Being optimistic is practically natural. Why else would we, by the thousands, be leafing through seed catalogs and planning for the coming months? Like the chickadee, we intuit the hope and promise of spring. We don’t despair in the barren lifelessness of winter.

Winter is harsh indeed, yet on some level, it softens us to the plight of those less comfortable. That said, there is one critter I haven’t conjured soft feelings for: Mr. Groundhog. As we speak the demented, nibble-toothed fellow is lurking in comfort in his underground lair. He’s studying his maps of my garden. Plotting out his escape routes. Checking his notes on where my most delectable plants are grown and making plans for improving his extensive network of tunnels under my garden. He’s an arrogant old chum, and compassion or no compassion, he is one sworn enemy I will never feel sorry for in winter.

Well, at least I think I never will.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.