Wednesday, September 22, 2010

fall equinox

The September mid-morning light is almost surreal, stronger than the eyes can bear, but tired and oblique at the same time. There are only two months of the year that can boast perfectly blue skies: April and September.

I feel the inherent melancholy of this perfectly harmonious symphony of colors: bright red maple trees projecting over the cloudless blue. There is the humid scent of fallen leaves in the air, graceful leaves blown hence and forth by uncoordinated wind gusts, little rabbits and squirrels instinctively hurried by the approach of winter.

I'm not going to lie, autumn makes me sad. If it weren't for the pumpkins, candy, little colorful buckets and costumes, turkeys and cranberry sauce, I'd probably start languishing right now. The aforementioned items will postpone the solar deficiency syndrome til January, when alas, no pumpkins!

For now, though, the bright and cheery oranges, rusts and yellows smile from every rack in front of the grocery store and from every fall planting. While going for a morning walk I spy a whole patch of perennial mums in a garden (I know they are perennials, because I saw them last year), which strengthens me in the conviction that they really exist (one would be inclined to believe them to be mythical things like the white unicorn or the Dodo bird). If you managed to have them come back to life the following year, you are a better gardener than I and I salute you.

So, in order not to indulge in completely unjustified existential angst, I turn my sight to harvest. And that would make anybody feel better: bushels of apples and grapes, pumpkins and the most wonderfully fragrant butternut squash. Did you ever notice the heavenly honey scent of butternut squash harvested in season?

Very colorful dry beans (see "Vegetable art"), bright red corn-like kernels of the magnolia fruit (pictures coming soon), sweet intoxicating aroma of overripe grapes, shy crocuses piercing dried up dirt, translucent white currants in the sunlight, bright blue flowered ground cover. One morning you wake up and open the door and the harsh, unmistakable chill of winter burns your nostrils. Not yet, not yet...
Posted by all-year-garden at 6:55 PM

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the art of waiting

You walk along the garden path one morning, look around and wonder where did it all come from. Naturally, you planted them all, or nearly all, with a few pleasant surprises here and there of self-sown perennials that sprung out from under annual growies before you got to notice them. Otherwise, though, the tall, stately beauties surrounding you are always taking you by surprise, because the first lesson in humility that is served to obstinate gardeners is the unwillingness of living things to develop according to your plans. They have their own internal clocks, their own environmental sensitivities and a completely different relationship with time than you. So, those lupines that you planted and thought dead sprung up on you two years later, after you planted cosmos over the following year, which self-seeded, and now both plants are gracefully mixing together in a fluff of stringy and palmed leaves, taking over an entire portion of your garden that you were intending for a completely different purpose this year. Or the snapdragons whose seeds you spread evenly over an area, but they decided to all come out bundled together to the left of the patch, leaving the rest of the dirt barren. Or the lily-of-the-valley that you tried to start from roots in the same spot for three years in a row, and now it decided to come out all at the same time and completely take over. Maybe you were planning, but your garden begs to differ. And when the garden and the gardener have different opinions, the garden usually wins. The struggling plant that you moved because you needed the space and didn't feel like throwing away now thrives in its new location with a vigor beyond expectations. Sun loving plants keep blooming in the shade behind the house, in a place that, of course, is not a showy feature of your garden. After a while, the oddities and surprises of your garden become familiar and dear to you, like an old friend's little idiosyncrasies warm up your heart after you haven't seen her in a while. A sense of peace descends upon the wiser gardener, a sense of acceptance that in this dialogue with nature, nature has something to say back to you. If those plants that you failed to recognize when you transferred them outdoors and planted them at the front of the flower bed turned out to be tomatoes, or if the sun garden you neatly organized according to height and flowering season exploded into a jumbled jungle of healthy growth, or if the miniature zinnias developed into four foot tall tree-like structures, or if all those tens of berries you saw on your strawberry plants were gone the second they turned slightly ripe because squirrels and rabbits believed in sharing, enjoy it, allow it, embrace it. If gardening only taught me one thing it would be the art of waiting. If you have enough patience and time, things kinda turn out the way you planned, sort of, eventually.

your private outdoors

Sitting at the table under the tree canopy, a book in one hand, the other hand mindlessly rubbing your temples, you lose track of time. The splotches of light filtered through the branches above move slowly opposite the sun path, while the day merges into evening. The light becomes gentler, more tired, almost horizontal. Around you two full walls, one half wall, a tree for a roof, and a balcony: your private outdoors. Noises come and go, the chirping of birds, the passing cars, people chatting while walking their dogs, the syncopated rhythm of joggers, the soft rubbery noise of bicycle wheels. The words on the page start fading as the evening shadow descends into the night, the contours are less precise, the contrast becomes nonexistent. Your cat comes around rubbing against your leg to remind you of dinner. The kids go in and out of the house abruptly, slamming doors, running down stairs and giggling plenty. Night flowering plants release their fragrance in the warmth of the day's end, and as light becomes more scarce, the sounds and scents intensify. The cat settles down in your lap, purring. Eerie little blue solar powered garden lights dot the darkened contours of the plant masses, and you discern more than you see the familiar garden path, the lilac bush, the archway above the gate. White flowers look like reversed shadows in the headlights of passing cars. The heavy summer night air, thick with humid fragrance, slowly cools down into a breeze.