I’m beginning to think that the task Gail and I are working on now might be the most physically exhausting of all the jobs we do.  Forget dividing daylilies, planting, lugging bags of soil or watering at noon during a heat wave.  Sitting in the chilly potting shed, trolling magazines for ideas and browsing seed catalogs has flattened me.  I feel like the bamboo looked this past Tuesday morning.  I feel glazed.  I feel heavy.  I feel like lying down for a while.

A “wintry mix” encapsulated the gardens earlier this week and if it hadn’t turned to plain rain and kept on dripping, I might have lingered outside with my camera to try to capture more frozen images.  But instead Gail and I sat right down at the potting shed table, leaned our elbows on the radiator and began flipping through magazines and catalogs and talking about what we want to see in the gardens this coming year.  And I’m finding that if I don’t invent an excuse to get up and move actively around the greenhouse, I’m liable to sink into a stupor.  Occasionally a plant (a variegated eryngium!) or a germ of an idea for one of the gardens perks me back up like the bamboo which is (mostly) vertical again.  And hopefully as we go through and complete this task (we’ll have the orders sent by the end of January), I’ll get more and more enlivened about the gardens we’re planning and less inclined to glaze over.

Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining.  I love this part of our job – the dreaming and planning and browsing – and I’d much rather be doing this than outside digging holes with Fred and Dan!  But is sitting still difficult for you too?  (Maybe Gail and I should set up treadmills side by side in the potting shed for the month of January…)  What do you do to stay alert and focused during your garden’s dream stage?