Circles entice me and confound me. I’m drawn to their curves, their unbroken ring, their ability to contain things. I like being encircled by love. I love wreathes on the door, and a house whose rooms flow one into the other in a circle. I use circle geometry in my gardens, curved paths, circular beds, and rounded archways. I like the sense of continuance. Yet, I am always searching for the beginning or the end.

The seasons are this way for me too. I love the confidence I have that spring will indeed follow winter and summer after that. I love to mark the year by the equinoxes and solstices and the cross-quarter days of old pagan calendars. The flow of years before my existence, now, and long after I’m gone is a comfort to me.  I love each season equally. I love summer for its exuberance and abundance, fall for pumpkins, warm soups, and wood fires. I love winter for its hush, its reprieve from the busyness of summer and fall. And I love spring for its delicate colors and return of the light. 

As a child, I egotistically thought the year should start in May as that was when I was born. As logical a beginning as any other. As I got older, my confidence faltered and I felt the beginning of the year was akin to the conundrum of which came first, the chicken or the egg? I still lean toward spring as a beginning as I see through a gardener’s eyes. We plant seeds, they grow, life begins. But without death there is no life. The breakdown of living matter by microorganisms is a death that begets life on which new plants and animals rely.  

So why this need to organize? To mark the beginning and the end? I feel it is a human weakness to have to bundle bits of life into organized groupings, hours into days, and months into years to mark the passage of time. To mark our beginning and our end.