Solving the Winter Blues

The mid-winter grumbles are reverberating hard--from New Hampshire, to Ohio and clear on over to Oregon. There's either too much rain or none at all. Mostly it's none. In places that typically have two-foot snow drifts all winter, the report is dire.

  • Topic: Winter Care
  • Author: High Country Gardens
  • Keywords: winter, winter care, maintenance
  • Date: February 2006

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The mid-winter grumbles are reverberating hard—from New Hampshire, to Ohio and clear on over to Oregon. There’s either too much rain or none at all. Mostly it’s none. In places that typically have two-foot snow drifts all winter, the report is dire. Across the nation it’s an unsettling time.

One local woman said it perfectly—”I think the lack of any appreciable precipitation really affects me.” And she got me to thinking. We expect winter to be moist. It’s probably something that goes back to our cave-dwelling ancestors. It’s part of the natural cycle; and when moisture doesn’t happen, something deep and DNA-ish feels out of whack.

The woman continued . . . “So I’ve been spending time gathering slash from my spot here and have realized in the process that working outside brings me back to life. In spite of, or perhaps because of the dryness, I am planning a flower garden and dropped by Santa Fe Greenhouses for one of their catalogs. Now there’s a solution for the winter blues!”

Interesting. Usually the winter blues means holing up inside for weeks and being deprived of sunlight. What’s happening is the opposite of SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Usually the lack of light is the main culprit of SAD that brings on depression. But this winter, at least here in the Southwest, we’re getting plenty of light. Can days on end of glorious blue skies and sun bring on depression?

I think so and I’ve taken to calling it the Seasonal Disavowed Disorder. We’re being deprived of wetness, of darkness, of holing up in the introspective caves of winter. It’s an odd form of the winter blues, what with the sunlight that’s pulling us outside being too early seasonally.

The woman is right, of course. Leafing through color photos of plants just waiting to live in our gardens does make the dryness and sadness go away. Planning a flowerbed is the perfect cure for the winter blues—no matter what they’re made of.