In “Lettuce in Winter,” a woman clears a junk-filled, blackberry-choked shed and, with her children’s help, rebuilds it as a rough greenhouse from salvaged windows, bricks, and an old sliding door. The work is hard and sometimes frightening, but there is warmth in the family’s shared effort and in the bench painted green “for the color of wishing.” She longs for lettuce in winter, yet the October seedlings grow thin, and December brings darkness and exhaustion. What saves them is almost accidental: the ducks won’t come in at night, so she goes out to chase them, then feels her way to the seedlings and waters them. The mood is earthy, wry, and quietly hopeful, ending with her hands “stretching toward summer in unseen leaves.”
Lettuce in Winter — Summary
The potting room was a miserable dank shed, trash-chocked, roofed in plastic, blackberries ingrown amid bedlam. she dragged it all into the light, sifting for tools or nails, then consigning the rest to dump runs. With one son, the quiet one, she roofed the room with scraps, tucking, there, or here, oddly-sized old windows. To the south, a sliding door turned on its side served for greenhouse glass. A friend's offer of a chimney to salvage solved the question of how to floor. With her other son, the tall one, she rented a long-legged ladder for picking bricks from the air, frightened at every ragged breath. They piled them by the plant-room door, and the girl, last child, brimful of jokes and laughter, brought bricks to her from the pile, which she set face up in a herringbone pattern. They swept sand and mortar into the cracks, and danced in the sunbeams then.
Now for a bench, new-painted green for the color of wishing, and pots of all sizes, flats too, with a tall can for watering. She hankered for lettuce in winter, and sowed the flats in October. After a month, wild geese and their musical throats gone south, she noted her seedlings spindly and sad, so taking hammer and two-by sixes, built a quick cold frame with the other half of the always helpful sliding door. By the sunny south wall in the duck pen she framed it, and dibbled the seedlings within. They liked that, but a darkness comes on in December; after a full day, full week, one comes home exhausted, to eat, to sleep, not to water gardens. One thing only has saved the lettuce: the ducks do not like coming in for the night. She goes into the dark to disturb them; they rush about complaining; the madwoman hops and chuckles. She locks them away from coyotes, and turns, as in afterthought, to visit her seedlings. By feel she gives them water, her hands stretching toward summer in unseen leaves.