The First Question: Why One Year of Writing and Healing?

I had for some time been mulling over a way to explore the possibilities in writing and healing.  Then I happened across a book, Fern House: A Year in an Artist’s Garden. That whole notion—the cycle of one year in a garden—it called to me. The book is by Deborah Schenck, an artist from England, who, several years back, moved into a nineteenth-century house called Fern House in a small town in Vermont and began to transform the land around her house into a garden.  Her book—mostly photographs and drawings—lovely photographs and drawings—records the first year of that transformation.

She begins in winter.  A wrought iron bench set against a snowy hillside.  The silvery bark of birches.  Maple sugaring.  Then spring. Apple blossoms.   Fiddlehead ferns.  Hyacinth.  Then summer.  Pink roses.  Hydrangea.  Nasturtiums.  That first summer they built a pond and bought one hundred goldfish to put in the pond.  She made jam.  She put in an herb garden.  Then the frost came—autumn.  Cider pressing. Pumpkins.  Thistle.  Then winter.

A year, it would seem, is long enough for something to happen.

One Year of Writing and Healing begins in August and moves through the year until July.  But a person could if they like begin the year at any month.