"…the vitality of what will be…"

I began photographing winter gardens in January 2025, in still-dark days, though the sun was rising higher against the horizon each morning. Exploring my own and neighbors’ gardens, I was taken with the often isolated, spare-but-resilient forms that were holding fast against whatever winter hurled at them and with the wet, fertile muck and mush of dead leaves, dry grass, and snapped twigs. Colors were abundant, some warm and vibrant, others cool and calming. All an unexpected delight.

As January wore on, and a cultural and political darkness descended, I realized that my quiet project had become a way to cope with growing despondence and a search for something persistent, some steady and steadying presence. As I thought more about these photographs and how other artists had explored similar ideas, I stumbled across this 2012 Mary Oliver poem, "Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness,” from which I’ve taken the title of this series:

“Every year we have been / witness to it: how the / world descends
into a rich mash, in order that / it may resume. / And therefore / who would cry out
to the petals on the ground / to stay, / knowing as we must, / how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be? / I don't say / it's easy, but / what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world / be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough, / this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east, / and the ponds be cold and black, / and the sweets of the year be doomed.”