the fall
It's cold out. I had been complaining recently about the weather being hot and smoggy, but the past few days we've had that rainy, windy weather that usually takes away summer until next year.
I was at my garden tonight. My tomato and pepper plants are heavy with fruit, the carrots are pushing up out of the ground, and the radishes I planted a month ago are almost ready to pick. As I picked more than a dozen ripe tomatoes, I could smell the scent from the leaves, which is hard to describe but reminds me of fall time. I really need to get out with a camera and take a picture of my little garden empire before the frosts take it down.
When I was a kid, my elderly neighbour, Mrs. Krogh, used to keep a huge garden, annuals, perrenials, vegetables, shrubs, wildflowers, everything. I remember on evenings like this sometimes she would tell me she felt sad that all her plants would die soon, but that is how nature works and we should accept it. And yet a few days later, she'd be out with a hand-trowel and clay pots, trying to transplant flowers out of her beds to, as she put it, save them. She'd start out just digging up one or two of her favorites, and then start finding excuse after excuse to take out another one. "That one could have a few more blooms yet" or "this one looks sad, it needs to come inside."
Many of them wouldn't survive long indoors, either because of transplant shock or just, as annuals, it was naturally their time to go.
It's always reminded me of how a person can both accept the inevitable and fight it at the same time.
I was at my garden tonight. My tomato and pepper plants are heavy with fruit, the carrots are pushing up out of the ground, and the radishes I planted a month ago are almost ready to pick. As I picked more than a dozen ripe tomatoes, I could smell the scent from the leaves, which is hard to describe but reminds me of fall time. I really need to get out with a camera and take a picture of my little garden empire before the frosts take it down.
When I was a kid, my elderly neighbour, Mrs. Krogh, used to keep a huge garden, annuals, perrenials, vegetables, shrubs, wildflowers, everything. I remember on evenings like this sometimes she would tell me she felt sad that all her plants would die soon, but that is how nature works and we should accept it. And yet a few days later, she'd be out with a hand-trowel and clay pots, trying to transplant flowers out of her beds to, as she put it, save them. She'd start out just digging up one or two of her favorites, and then start finding excuse after excuse to take out another one. "That one could have a few more blooms yet" or "this one looks sad, it needs to come inside."
Many of them wouldn't survive long indoors, either because of transplant shock or just, as annuals, it was naturally their time to go.
It's always reminded me of how a person can both accept the inevitable and fight it at the same time.