bloom

ever forward into a new year

*at the bottom of this letter is a discount code for paid subscribers for 50% off naturally dyed tea towel calendars. happy new year!

At first it was the Christmas that our tree flew off the top of the car. Driving down the county route feeling terribly secure in my solo tree tying abilities for the third year running, I heard a whoosh. A quick, obvious, complete sound of a Christmas tree freeing itself from its ties and setting off into the wind. I looked into my rearview mirror in the same moment and there she went, airborne for a brief, free second before hitting the road with what I can imagine was a hard, quiet, evergreen sound. There was a quick moment of panic and an immediate sense of humor and I drove on another quarter of a mile to a pull-off along the river to turn around. The boys chattered nervously and prayers went up that the tree in the road wouldn’t cause any accidents in the 2 minutes it took me to turn around and double back. As we approached the spot where the tree had taken flight I saw a dark blue pickup parked on the side and a man hauling the tree over to the wooded shoulder. It would have been the first car that came upon the tree as I hadn’t passed any oncoming traffic when I turned around, and I felt a rush of gratitude. The man was getting back into his truck and preparing to pull out as he saw me pull over – ready to get my twine out and try to get the tree home – and instead of driving off he stepped out and I saw my neighbor Dan. A particularly nice neighbor, we once collaborated on a town brunch offering of his homemade sausage gravy and my homemade biscuits. He offered to put the tree in the back of his pickup and bring it to my house and both my gratitude and the sheer Christmas spirit of the moment were brimming. We followed Dan up the mountain all the way home and got our beautiful, rebellious, somehow entirely intact Christmas tree up into her pride of place. At a holiday market the following weekend we found a lino cut card (by canned worms) with a Griswold-esque image of a Christmas tree on top of an old station wagon and we bought it and taped it to the fridge, laughing as we retold each other the story.

The week before Christmas I got a text from Lauren, a photo of a homemade flier at the feed store advertising 5 white geese in need of a new home. Never one to ignore a sign from a reliable source, my interest was piqued, and I spent a couple of busy nearly-Christmas days wondering if I ought to email their owner. On Sunday evening I did – a quick if they’re still available we might be interested kind of note. I heard back the following day: yes they are available, free for the taking, thank you so much, and we leave the country on Christmas eve would you want to come get them tomorrow? And so we did. A long drive up a road we’d never been on before and an hour and a few getting-five-geese-into-the-back-of-a-Subaru foibles later we were driving back down that road at sunset heading home with 5 quiet, nervous, blue-eyed new friends. We settled them into the coop and took all manner of measures to make their introduction pleasant for the birds old and new. Having been raised by the children at their previous home, they were docile and sweet from the start and it was heart-opening to get to admire them and get to know them over those first few Christmas days and from then on it was the Christmas we got the white geese. Call me a certified chicken lady, but there’s just something about backyard birds. Within a few days they found the stream out back and despite cold, cold water and iced over spots they love to swim, often joined by our grey goose and pair of ducks. In spring I hope to bake with goose eggs or maybe even hatch some goslings from one of the mated pairs. It’s a small thing, bringing home a few more homestead birds, but I’m glad they found me.

Here on the other side of the year I’m relaxing. Not relaxing like taking it easy on purpose but relaxing like unwinding my body and spirit from 8 weeks of All the Birthdays and All the Holidays all at once. There is so much relief for me in January, the deepening snow like a quilt between my world and the whole world, the cold like a full, cleansing breath. People sometimes like to assert what the true start of the new year is – just after the harvest, January 1, the coming of spring. I celebrate them all. Back to school season is a new year, putting the garden to bed ends the year, January is surely a brand new year, and spring! Well there it is, a new year. Never one to turn down a chance to reflect or a moment to transform, I will take them all.

After the winter solstice I wrote down 13 wishes for the new year on small pieces of paper and folded them up tight. Each day I tossed one, without looking, into the wood stove until there was just one left. That would be my wish for the year, the one it would be my job to put my hands to and make come true. Others will come to fruition too, but I can let them unfold as they may. Some of my wishes were big and meaningful, productive and goal-oriented. A few were smaller and more frivolous; one-off moments that would make me glad to be here in 2025 if they came true. The one I picked at first felt like a smaller one, one I’d forgotten I’d written down almost as soon as I had. Bloom my home. Let me explain:

Henry has always argued for naming our house. A voracious reader and lover of history and fantasy, he connects with the idea of a house with a name. I remember the first time I visited Peaks Island in Maine and noticed a few of the houses had names on the outside, how charmed I was with that bit of lingering New England tradition. For a long time we casually referred to our house as the Horseradish House. It grows here with such verve and tenacity it just made sense, but it never really stuck. Last summer my house was painted Pastry Pink, and after the beautiful dark wood door was accidentally painted white in the process, I painted over it an earthy sage green. Henry suggested maybe we ought to call the house The Rose. Too on the nose, the rose, I said. And he said what about Bloom? And without much consideration we all just sort of liked it. Bloom for the roses and the flowers, bloom for the boys growing up strong and proud inside it, bloom for me in all the ways I hope I always will. Since the house was painted, my mind has been frequently overrun with thoughts of all the ways I want to make the outside more beautiful and more ours. A fruitful garden was a wish I had made too, but this is separate, and this is what I got. Bloom my home is making window boxes with River for the front of the house. It’s painting a barn quilt, getting a cultivated rose to plant for myself on Mother’s Day. Bloom is getting spring bulbs half price and planting them in pots and on every corner of the house just under the frozen ground. Bloom is finally putting a new lightbulb in the outdoor light, it’s tending the perennials and mowing as a mundane act of love. This year, we’ll bloom. The beautiful thing about these wishes is they aren’t meant to be a closed loop – while I will love how those window boxes look, I have this feeling there will be moments seemingly unrelated that this work will lead to. Perhaps at the greenhouse in May I will run into an acquaintance who becomes a better friend, maybe a neighbor driving by will commission a barn quilt for their own home, perhaps there will be a project Henry or River and Osa want to do that brings them joy and serendipity of their own. It’s all possible, it’s a new year.

warmly,

Jessica