Living in the countryside, the writer Mari Mörö (born 1962) whiles away the January days by reading seed catalogues and reaming of warmer, longer days

The cultivation of gardens is often associated with hope. Why is that? Perhaps because optimism is a natural corollary of practicality. In the final analysis, the former nourishes the latter. It is rare to meet someone with green fingers who worries in advance about storm damage and the vanity of everything. The Preacher's fulminations against the vanity of everything in the Ecclesiastes — and it is worth remembering that he got everything he dreamt of, including a splendid garden — is not encountered among those who throw themselves into the pursuit of gardening. At least not when they are in the midst of life. Getting his compost from plants that have already lived their allotted span, the keen gardener notes: a place for growth and growing. The point of gardens is not stopping time, but constantly flowing forwards and changing, and in particular the enjoyment of fleeting moments.
     In Lin Jutang's book The Importance of Living, there is a list of the things that flowers like. Among them are a clean window, kettles that sing in the night and a visiting monk. Flowers are, on the other hand, offended by, among other things, discussions of public appointments, the slime left by snails and the kinds of flowers that bloom before the payment of taxes.
     Where to find a window-cleaner, a singing kettle or a visiting monk? I must think about it after New Year. But then there perhaps won't be time, for the first catalogues come straight after Twelfth Night. And that clean window is a state of mind, for hope can pierce it and is reflected everywhere: as large as growth, and in the direction of life.

***

Snow almost a metre deep defies the garden. A breath of wind from the field throws snow up against the door. The carved-out walkways of the previous day are now whirling snow-dunes, drifting snow that both flees and jostles. Only with difficulty was I able to push the door open.
     On the third of January, Tellus is closer to the sun than on the other days of the year. As my snow-pusher or spade encounters tussocks, the pleasures of the dibber, in the predictable grip of the seasons, come to mind. Fetching the post from half a kilometre away, together with clearing the snow, takes a couple of hours. The icy wind snatches a letter from my gloves like taking a lollipop from a child.
     In today's newspaper the director of the Finnish Meteorological Office demands that politicians should do something about climate change. The average temperature of the Earth is set to rise, and the ice caps are melting at a furious speed. Contrary to what some more pessimistic climate scholars have said, the professional cultivation of corn at the Oulu latitude — 200 kilometres below the Polar Circle — is not, at this point, a project worth investing in. It may be a different matter in 2080.
     The 1960s Soviet leader Khrushchev comes to mind — he had an idée fixe of sowing maize fields in Siberia. His visit to America was fateful, and for about five years corn was farmed even in Karelia. The Communist party's spokesman said that the Soviet Union would beat the United States hollow in maize production. The former miner, by now becoming a burden to his nation, wanted to be a farming expert too, and the results were tragicomic — you might say corny. A consignment of maize given to south-east Finland for planting perished with the first frosts.
     Rather than delusions of grandeur, quite a lot of gardeners suffer at least to some extent from 'zone envy': they would like to live in conditions a few degrees milder. Choice would increase greatly, and the growing season would lengthen. Moreover, experiments might prove successful, and a zone fanatic might conjure up zone three's conditions in zone five, if only temporarily.
     Here, to the north of Salpausselkä, you can be grateful if the twisted hazel, also known as the corkscrew bush, overwinters successfully. Many climbing roses and clematis may bite the dust, even if you cover them in pine branches or blankets and, on top of it all, dress them in expanded polystyrene collars. I am also a little cynical regarding boxwood, and for the same reason I don't invest in silver firs. I can't bear the terrible nerves and trepidation that plants unsuitable for our climate inevitably bring with them.
     Weeds are guaranteed overwinterers. Your mind can rest easy about your couch grass, pigweed and mayweed right up to Inari in the far north. And mint will not desert the gardener either; in a couple of years it will be quite a burden.
     Fragile and constantly changing formal gardens have appeared in my back yard: knots of snow and ice. Overnight, statues and pillars are pressed into existence; the tussocks look like statues, sort of stickers-in-the-dark... For a moment I thought the Master of the Garden had returned from his travels, but the rumbling was actually caused by the snow falling off the roof.
     In a landscape without street lamps, you use ice lanterns. The freezing of water is wonder enough outside the growing season. It always includes surprising melting, the wretched indicator of the direction of time. Oh dear. The sun has to squander a great deal of warmth before the earth melts and the frost loosens its grip. Unfair that half the gas-ball's energy goes elsewhere in the solar system.
     The heliocentric world-view is challenged by Twelfth Night, if not before. One has to work in a dark, silent world. And it's been claimed that snow is a monotonous element. Welcome to a world emptied of snow-ploughs. Snowdrift, banks of snow, powdery, wet or cakey snow, sludge — all different from the walker's point of view.
     The dibber does not burst into tears even if the sledge's runners disappear in the snow. In fact almost the entire sledge disappears from view. The last glimpse of it: a tiny piece of the safety pennant. If you leave the road that leads into the village, you don't dare go any farther than the postbox.
     The seed catalogues begin to arrive. Some of them by snail-mail, some electronically. The people who publish the catalogues certainly know their value, as the gardening sector is growing by ten per cent each year, and it is visible in the zealous selling of images. Consumers are offered complete garden tableaux and assured that, for example, this dazzling rhododendron valley with Japanese maples and white spruces can be theirs with a wave of their green fingers.
     First, you leaf through the pictures. Sutton Seeds, which can boast of a business stretching back a couple of centuries, has put a yellow treasure flower on its cover. Very conventional and pretty, just right for a cover. The sales of cottage garden seeds and organic vegetables are seasoned with the puckery face of the gardener/writer/TV personality Alan Titchmarsh.
     There is plenty of gardening gear and gadgets: snail-traps, extraordinarily fast composters and efficient sprinklers, among other things. A 60-centimetre, plastic potato-growing barrel is suitable for the small gardens of the island kingdom. It does not differ much from the way in which spuds are grown on Finnish balconies — namely, in car tyres. This was also done at the beginning of the 1990s at Viipuri [Vyborg, in Russia] Library, where the librarians also grew tomatoes. Earthing up is not difficult. I also know of carrots grown in a drainage pipe, not kilos of them, but enough for a taste. Many British catalogues advertise strawberries grown in towers which easily accommodate a couple of dozen seedlings.
     Because of the low cost of land there is no shortage of space, at least here in eastern Finland. The dibber's garden activities are limited by time and mortal clay more than by money. Of all the hobbies offered by the world, gardening must be among the cheapest. It even works for a lazy person in the sense that you never have to go anywhere, as long as your garden is attached to your home, as it most often is.
     Passionflower seeds are on offer in an Exotic mix, among them some rarities. You can have Passiflora Mathewsii Red or Black Beauty — think! — for four pounds, although you only get twelve seeds. There is no guarantee of germination; the seller never promises that. The germination percentage is only a guideline.
     A company providing psychoactive plants and existing on the borders of legality suggests through the internet that a particular Cape primrose should be placed in every bedroom, because the ethereal oil that evaporates from its leaves increases erotic power — this has been tested with elephants. And Kava powder is equivalent in effect to an electric shock, although the same source remarks that such a desperate state is not to be wished on anyone. As a total solution it bears comparison with school medicine, says Jack L., who has been reinvigorated by the treatment.
     I get up from my armchair and inspect my overwintering passionflowers, which have been cut back to the length of a pencil. These inhabitants of a ten-degree intermediate space are phlegmatic hibernators. There is not yet any sign of tendril growth or flowers. I pour a little water into five pots.
     The buds on the camellia are the size of grapes and if you let the plant dry out even once, it gets cross and drops its buds. And the flower can open at almost any time of year. The Madagascar jasmine has twisted itself languorously round the rope, the cactuses threaten its slumber, spikes at the ready. It is not yet necessary to cut a skylight in the ceiling because of the shiny-leaved wild plum, but next spring it will be a close thing. There is no doubt that this crowd knows the winter solstice to be behind it.
     In the cool, greenish spare room there is and will be a shortage of window and deck places, as advance growth will not work in March except in indoor spaces. The shortage is not aided by the fact that after Sutton's one tries to make out the Thompson & Morgan catalogue. Knoll Gardens has an impressive selection of decorative grasses: 256 different ones, in nearly every hue. Twenty-six catalogues, among them an extraordinary collection of poppies, remain to be examined. I gain a distant understanding of what the arrival of the first Anttila department store mail order catalogues must have felt like in the countryside back in the 1950s.
     I look out of the window at the sky. At the lightest time, it is the colour of soapstone. I would like a skylight, but the Master of the Garden says: 'A skylight is a state of mind.' I don't believe him. If I wanted an earth cellar, would his answer be the same?

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Extracts from the collection of essays Melkein kaikki itää. Puutarhaa pihan täydeltä ('Almost everything germinates. A back yard full of garden', Kirjapaja, 2006)