Stevieslaw: What dies in winter.
It was just nice enough yesterday for me to bundle up, grab my old pruning shears and head out to the garden. I like to believe I’m a gardener, but the truth is I never got around to putting my garden to bed last fall, so there was a lot of trimming to do. As I went from plant to plant, trimming away the winter kill, I couldn’t help but notice how quiet it was—still too early for the professional landscaping crews, endemic to the neighborhood, to begin their mowing.
Along the property line, I noticed that my neighbor Walt was out trimming as well. We gave each other a half-hearted nod. Once, we would have huddled at the line and spoken for a few minutes. We’d have talked about the neighborhood, or sports, or events at the College up the hill. But Walt has been moving right politically since the early ‘80s and I have been moving left. He will vote for Trump in the primary in April and I will vote for Sanders. And in the quiet, brisk beginnings of the new season, it was easy to see just how estranged we have become. How there is no topic we can still talk about together. How we have become two gardeners who can’t even talk about the weather.