“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency, and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.” ⁃
Katherine May – Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.
I was reminded of this beautiful quote by Katherine May when I was in my garden a little late this season in preparing and pruning my roses for winter. They wanted to keep blooming, and I had yellow rose blossoms in early December. I knew that the health of the plant required me to prune to conserve her energy, but I wanted MORE!! More summer, more flowers, more sweetness. I recognize that I had some resistance to the darker days of winter. I was forgetting the profound gifts that this fallow and still season offers.
As the days shorten and the air turns colder, the garden begins its natural descent into rest. For many gardeners, this season invites the timeless ritual of pruning and wintering roses—cutting back what has grown wild, removing what no longer serves the plant, and protecting the tender core that will bloom again come spring. Nature, as always, offers us a metaphor.
Pruning the Roses in late fall and early winter, roses require a careful kind of tending. Not harshness—just honesty. We remove branches that are dead or diseased. We cut back areas that have grown inwards, blocking light from reaching the plant’s center. We trim long canes so the winter winds don’t snap them. Then we mulch, mound, and sometimes wrap. We create warmth and protection so the rose can survive the cold months. The rose isn’t dying. It’s preparing.
What If We Wintered Ourselves the Same Way?
Humans, too, need seasons of intentional slowing. But unlike the garden, we often resist them. We push through fatigue. We cling to old commitments. We carry emotional weight long after its season has passed. But winter invites a different kind of wisdom. Wintering is not withdrawal. It’s restoration. Katherine May suggests that winter is not the death of the life cycle but rather is the crucible. The word “crucible” comes from Medieval Latin crucibulum (a melting pot/night lamp), likely linked to Latin crux (cross), perhaps from a cross-shaped lamp or a vessel used in heating. The figurative meaning of Crucible indicates a trial, a place of intense transformation. It is the sacred pause, the deep breath, the quiet recalibration before new growth.
What We Can Prune in Our Own Lives
Just as roses ask us to cut away what drains their energy, we might gently look at our own lives and ask:
• What habits or patterns feel like dead wood?
• What old stories or beliefs are blocking inner light?
• What obligations have grown too long, tugging on our energy?
• Where are we saying “yes” out of fear instead of alignment?
• What parts of me long for rest? This is not a call for self-criticism—it’s an invitation to clarity.
Pruning is an act of love.
Preparing Our Inner Garden for Winter
Just as we protect roses from harsh winter winds, we also need practices that offer warmth to the heart and spirit. Wisdom is cultivated when we step back, turn inward, and allow the dark seasons to come. These are the necessary pauses that reshape us from the inside out; the liminal thresholds where our inner landscape adapts and rearranges herself.
• Create small rituals of rest — warm tea, slower mornings, gentle movement.
• Gather what nourishes — stories, friendships, creative sparks.
• Wrap yourself in protection — boundaries, quiet time, nourishing food.
• Trust the unseen work — winter is when roots deepen.
We do not bloom all year. And we are not meant to.
When spring and summer return, roses often astonish us with the fullness of their new growth. They burst forward not despite their wintering, but because of it. May this season give you permission to prune with compassion, to soften into stillness, and to trust that periods of rest are not empty—they are fertile.
One of my favorite sayings attributed to Native American wisdom is: “Give thanks for blessings that are already on their way.”
Your next blooming is already on its way. But no rush there. One day at a time.