‘Tis the season for us to count our blessings. Here in the greenhouse, Gail and I count some of our blessings by the hundreds and have just added peace of mind to our list. Today electricians installed a back-up generator at the greenhouse!

As optimistic as we gardeners generally are – especially now when our collective glass is half full of the sun’s tilt toward summer – we are also prone to gloom and doom reality checks. Can’t we all play out worst-case-scenarios as competitively as a contact sport? For years now Gail and I have been able to clearly envision a cold night. A very cold night, well below freezing. White-out blizzard conditions and snow drifted to the eaves… And some time in the wee hours a limb snaps, or a car crashes and the power goes out. The temperature in the greenhouse, which is kept in the high 30’s to 40’s, falls fast… This is the stuff our nightmares have been made of.

Despite the fact that nothing resembling that nightmare has occurred in years, Gail and I have both woken, heart thumping in the middle of the night imagining the worst. We have had makeshift contingency plans in place over the winter involving the tent heater, a portable generator, and me on call to come out in my pjs and headlamp. Even in the best of the worst case scenarios, we still imagined losing most of our plants. And to lose these plants would be a tremendous loss for the gardens. But now, due to the generosity of donors who wish to remain anonymous, the gardens’ plants are safe and we can rest easy.

The official start of winter gives us the gift of optimism – Gail and I are so grateful to be able to keep passing it along by way of our gardens.

Happy Holidays!