Yes, of course, it is down but not done. I will need to rake when the sweetgum, the Callery pear, and the paperbark maples finally decide to undergo abscission. They are very late to drop their leaves this year. And, of course, I left up some late bloomers, including annuals, that I couldn’t bear to cut down “just yet.” The house sparrows are back in the deck awning and the tools will need to be cleaned and sharpened.
The bulk of the job is done, though. Kevin and I put in a long day this past Friday and a short morning on Saturday and concluded our season together. A beautiful season, we both agreed, as Sara joined us on the deck for our ritual coffee and gluten free chocolate pumpkin muffins. So much laughter, so much sharing, such good conversations. A gift, indeed, a blessing.
But the garden is down, the season effectively ended. A good time, perhaps, to reflect on what it all means.
A gardening friend once pointed out how unlikely gardeners are to brag. Have you ever heard a gardener say they are good at gardening? A gardener might invite you to stop by to see their daylilies in bloom but, if you should accept the invitation, you are more likely to get an apology for the weeds that haven’t been pulled or the plant that is flopping over than you are to hear of how successfully the gardener has achieved a desired effect .
We gardeners tend to focus on our failures, but our failures don’t ever seem to stop us from continuing to garden.
Why?
Well, here are a few things to consider.
Gardening gives us a chance to look closely and often, to attend to detail, to notice the pattern on the bloom of a blackberry lily or the texture of a birch leaf. It is impossible to be out in the garden without being stopped at every turn by something worth taking note of, be it a Geum still blooming in November or a snow drop pushing up through the March snow.
Gardening requires us to focus. Gardening works better than yoga to control my “monkey mind.” If I am trying to eradicate the hated bittersweet from my garden, I need to focus on precisely which of the many green shoots before me has the feared orange root. I do not want to pull out witchhazel sprouts by mistake. And if I do not focus on precisely where I need to insert my weeder to dig out the bittersweet shoot, I can easily slice open my finger. “Attention must be paid” makes more sense in the garden than in the play.
Gardening keeps us active. We gardeners, I say to those who ask, are athletes, even if we don’t train as we should. We use our bodies constantly and we use them hard. We bend, we lift, we dig, we yank. We scramble under shrubs to cut off low branches or get out wet dead leaves. We stretch high to prune a crossing branch on our favorite Japanese maple. We bend to weed and kneel to plant. We move wheelbarrows loaded with compost or mulch and pitchfork the contents onto garden beds. We drag bags of yard trash to the side of the road. Our exercise may not be aerobic but it is constant and varied.
Unlike most of my neighbors who connect with each through dogs and children, I don’t have a dog or a child. I do have a garden, though, and it connects me. I share plants with Nancy next door and information with a neighbor passing by who asks about my dwarf reblooming lilac. I enjoy a chat about organic lawn care as a neighbor asks about my latest attempt to fix my lawn and as I scratch behind the ears of a favorite dog.
At the end of our day of taking down the garden, I said to Kevin, “I don’t know how I will get through dark times ahead when I can’t be out in my garden.”
By which I meant to say that out in the garden, I am absorbed by what is happening here and now, in front of me, and not about the dark possibilities ahead.
By which I meant to say that in the garden, despite disease and pests, failures and frustrations, I am focused on the positive, the good, what enriches my soul and keeps me hopeful. Out in the garden I feel surrounded by beauty and complexity that feed my soul.
By which I meant to say that in the garden I get to witness growth and change, possibility and potential. Sometimes those changes take place so quickly that we miss them. More often, gardening presents as the slowest of the performing arts, and in so doing teaches us patience, for there is no point in hurrying a plant even if we could.
By which I meant to say that my garden keeps me in touch with the patterns of light and temperature that produce growth and decline. It alerts me to the rhythms of a world larger, more ancient, and far more important than myself. It gives me perspective.
And so I celebrate the solstice and equinoxes because it helps me keep this perspective.
By which I meant to say that out in the garden I am gathered, focused, at one with myself and the work. And so at peace.
Please feel free to share:
http://www.perennialwisdom.net/thegardenisdown/
| If you aren’t already a subscriber, I’d be honored to have you as a reader. You can sign up here.http://perennialwisdom.net. |