cygnus ovenbird Yesterday I put the garden to sleep for the winter. I had procrastinated, waiting until the last day with any chance of sun. I was a reluctant gardener, but once I started I was gripped by a mania—a joyful frenzy of pruning and raking. I held before me a rusted pair of secateurs, still sharp enough to cut through wind toughened stalks. I razed it all to the earth where I found that my euphoric destruction had failed before it even began. Though the winter hasn’t even laid down its sheets of frost, and the spring is a distant dream, small green shoots were already taking their first breaths above the soil. My agitation turned to stillness then, and I tucked them in with quilts of yellow leaves, barely resisting the urge to kiss their furled faces huddled in the dark. Above me the trumpeter_swans were on the move, their brassy calls playing taps in the fading light, wild voices calling everyone home. 251112 what's it to you? who go blather from