Although we’ve become used to green Decembers in Southwestern Ontario, roses blooming in the last days of a warm and wet November make winter seem far away.

And yet, snow or not, the holiday season will come. With it the lights and jingles and gift guides; the lists of ideas for those of us out of them.

As a gardener, I am and have been the target of those lists. I’ve been fortunate to have received decades of garden gifts. Useful, playful, thoughtful and unexpected, most were used, all were appreciated. But there are those that resonate, that continue to give long after they’ve been given.

When I think of what my own gift guide would include, it is these few treasures I would have again and give in turn. They would be those that have introduced me to a new facet of the natural world or broadened my understanding of it and my place in it. They would be those that have helped without harming.

One of my first and most prized gifts for the garden was a birdbath. For almost 30 years it has anchored my gardens. It’s basin, sides covered in lichen, has held flocks of bluebirds and reflections of the summer sky. It has grown spears of surprise ice when we’ve been hasty or slow in our ritual to open and close the seasons.

Chipmunks and robins have sat at its edge, sharing evening........

© Sarnia Observer