You get to know what you can grow in your garden, mostly by trial and error. I have never been good with brassicas but root vegetables do rather better. A greenhouse in recent years has opened up early succulent lettuces and really tasty tomatoes; for my money Ailsa Craig takes a lot of beating as the best variety. In January not much is happening, you might think, in the garden but the leeks are there, standing like sentries, tall and straight, their tops flopped over as if plumes on the helmets on the sentries' heads.
Leeks are such a great vegetable because they do exactly that; they stand the whole winter and are as good at the end as at the beginning. It's not the size either which is important, but the taste. Leek and potato soup takes your breath away when you dig them and cook them on the same day. Alongside the leeks the first frost has now done its necessary work on the parsnip tops and they, too, can be dug. The roots lie deep in the soil ready to be discovered. They were Tender and True, like the variety they are, and a great bonus to the Christmas dinner, chopped and roasted and sweet as a nut.
The cold and barren winter is a time to enjoy and indulge in the garden. Life there certainly still is out there but also clearing up and cutting back and sorting out. It brings its own satisfaction and, of course, it prepares the ground for new life to come in the spring when the sun warms the soil and you sow and plant a new crop to begin the cycle again. Comparisons between the garden and the spiritual life are legion and a bit overblown. I don't think you are nearer to God in a garden than you are anywhere else. Nature is its own window into the divine but so is many another experience and encounter along life's way.
But perhaps there is a valid analogy here. In the winters of our experience life and growth often go on secretly and hidden beneath the surface. The barren times are often productive. They push us to our limits and yet shape us and make us more whole than we were before. These winter days can be times to reorder and redirect our lives, take stock before setting off again. Lent and Advent are the seasons of appraisal and self-examination. Advent is behind us and soon so too will be the Christmas season. But Lent is just around the corner. This year don't let it pass like any other time. Prepare the soil, cut back the foliage and let the light in.
When we do these things then life can begin to taste that much sweeter. We get the real flavour. Our experiences are valued for what they are: God's gift for our fulfilment and enjoyment and his praise. Nature isn't an adjunct to humanity because one is in tune with the other, one feeds the other. It is not just a question of keeping the garden tidy, like we tidy and hoover the house. It is that we are renewed by the soil and our contact with it and all living things. We travel the same road; we respond in the same way. We are part of the same creation.
Canon David Eaton, from the January 2008 magazine