Category: Gardening

A Slow and Radiant Happening

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In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven’s paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven’s calm, they take each other’s arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that’s said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds
pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we’re here, I think it must
    be heaven.
~Elizabeth Spires from “In Heaven it is Always Autumn” from Now the Green Blade Rises

The Bench by Manet

We wander our autumn garden mystified at the passing of the weeks since seed was first sown, weeds pulled, peapods picked. It could not possibly be done so soon–this patch of productivity and beauty, now wilted and brown, vines crushed to the ground, no longer fruitful.

The root cellar is filling up, the freezer packed. The work of putting away is almost done.

So why do I go back to the now barren soil my husband so carefully worked, numb in the knowledge I will pick no more this season, feel the burst of a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth or the green freshness of a bean straight off the vine?

Because for a few fertile weeks, only a few weeks, the garden was a bit of heaven on earth, impermanent but a real taste nonetheless. 

We may have mistaken Him for the gardener when He appeared to us radiant, suddenly unfamiliar. He offered the care of the garden, to bring in the sheaves, to share the forever mercies in the form of daily bread grown right here and now.

When He says my name, I will know Him. 

And the light is golden.

Attempting to Stopper Time

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…the golden hour of the clock of the year.
Everything that can run to fruit has already done so:
round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy pears,
black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat.
Flowers that were once bright as a box of crayons
are now seed heads and thistle down.
All the feathery grasses shine in the slanted light.
It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs and wind chimes,
time to draw the drapes against the wind,
time to hunker down.
Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup,
but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber;
it slides though our hands like a rope of silk.
At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.
~Barbara Crooker “And Now it’s October” from Small Rain.

I do try to stopper time.

I try every day on this page,
not to suspend time or render it frozen,
but like flowers and fruit that wither,
I want to preserve these moments –
a few harvested words and pictures
to sample some chilly day.

I offer it up to you now,
a bit of fragrance,
to sip of its sweetness
as it glows, luminous in the bottle.

Let’s share.
Leave it unstoppered.
The passage of time
is meant to be preserved this way.

photo by Josh Scholten

Pure State of Light

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How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
~Mary Jo Salter “Absolute September”

Only nine days left of summer –
I search the skies for what might be left of it.

The mornings lighten later,
evenings darken sooner.

How can I not sadden at the change?

Yet this is where I am in life,
this time of bringing inside the garden and orchard
to savor and salvage before the rains come.

The light leaves behind ripened fruit of foraged memories;
in the darkening, its purity sweetens over time.

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Hiding Nothing

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You can hide nothing from God.
The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him.
He wants to see you as you are,
He wants to be gracious to you.
You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers,
as if you were without sin;
you can dare to be a sinner.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together

In your hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
They are alive.
Who would argue otherwise?

But now, after years of consideration,
I am getting beyond that.
What about the sunflowers? What about
The tulips, and the pines?

Listen, all you have to do is start and
There’ll be no stopping.
What about mountains? What about water
Slipping over rocks?

And speaking of stones, what about
The little ones you can
Hold in your hands, their heartbeats
So secret, so hidden it may take years

Before, finally, you hear them?
~Mary Oliver “in your hands” from Swan: Prose and Poems

When I take myself to the doctor, I trust I’m seeing someone who tries to know me thoroughly enough that he or she can help me move out of illness into better health.

This is how acceptance feels: trusting someone enough to come out of hiding, allowing them to see the parts of me I prefer to keep hidden.

As a physician myself, I am reminded by the amount of “noticing” I did in the course of my work. Each patient, and there were so many,  deserved my full attention for the few minutes we were together.  I started my clinical evaluation the minute I entered the room and I began taking in all the complex verbal and non-verbal clues offered up, sometimes unwittingly, by another human being.

During the COVID pandemic, my interactions with patients became all “virtual” so I didn’t have the ability to observe as thoroughly as I usually did. Instead, I needed them to tell me outright what was going on in their lives, their minds and their hearts in both spoken or written words. I couldn’t ‘see’ them, even on a screen, in the same way as face to face in the same room.

How can someone call out their worries to me when they are hidden behind a camera lens?

I can’t witness first hand the trembling hands, their sweatiness, their scars of self injury.  Still, I am their audience and a witness to their struggle; even more, I must understand their fears to best help them. My brain must rise to the occasion of taking in another person, accepting them for who they are, with every wart and blemish, offering them the gift of compassion and simply be there for them at that moment.

God isn’t blinded in His Holy work as I am in my clinical duties. He knows us thoroughly because He made us; He knows our thoughts before we put them into words. There is no point in trying to stay hidden from Him.

He holds us, little pebbles that we are, in His Hand, and He listens to our secret heartbeats.

Those of us who believe we can remain effectively hidden will never be invisible to God.

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Zucchini Chronicles

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Recite fifty zucchini recipes!                                                                                     Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;                                                                                 sauté with olive oil and cumin,                                                                                casserole of lamb; baked                                                                                             topped with cheese; marinated;                                                                                stuffed; stewed….

Sneak out before dawn to drop                                                                                              them in other people’s gardens,                                                                                            in baby buggies at churchdoors.

 Shot, smuggling zucchini into                                                                                               mailboxes, a federal offense.
~Marge Piercy from “Attack of the Squash People”

The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.
~Dave Barry

One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight … Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke.
~Barbara Kingsolver

It started innocently enough in April
with two-leaf seedlings labeled green and golden;
non-descript squash plants harboring
vast potential.

By June the plants crept across the ground with vines
reaching past the beans to threaten the cucumbers:
going where no vine has gone before,
to divide and conquer, leaving no dust untouched.

July buds formed blossoms inviting bees deep
into yellow-throated pollen pools
thickening within days to elongated flesh:
fecundity in action before our eyes.

The finger-like projections at first harvested
too small, but temptation overwhelms patience;
sauted, grilled with garlic, superb in
supreme simplicity.

But come back a day later: hose-like vines
pumping into each squash, progressive inflation like
balloon-man creations to be twisted and transformed,
but too plump, too distended, too insatiable.

It’s a race to keep up with the pace of production
eat some, give them away, leave on doorsteps like abandoned kittens,
in boxes in church lobbies, lunch rooms at work,
food banks posting signs: “No more zucchini please!”

They march in formation in the garden path
as they are yanked swelling from their umbilical cords
and lined up, stacked, multiplying
like the broom fragments of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.

Once tossed on to the compost pile,
they rest in intimate embrace through heated decomposition
in dead of winter, amid steam rising,
a seedling, innocent enough, pokes through exploding with potential~

Run for your lives!

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And So It Goes…

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Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how
this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and
leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything
will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for
that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all
those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is
already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do
but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.
~David Budbill “Toward the End of August”

As the calendar page flips to September this morning, I feel sad for what we leave behind, while knowing what is coming.

Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to 18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning is brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people who visit, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard bearing and fruiting out of control.

As early September days usher us toward autumn, our older grandchildren will adjust to a more predictable routine of school days, ripe with learning opportunities. Great teachers will lead them into vast new worlds of knowledge.

My teacher friend Bonnie coordinates an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that will go home with them at the end of the school year. These students create their own learning center with both brains and hands, applying wood-burned and painted designs, with inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. Their desks represent a solid reminder of what they leave behind each year, while striving to become something new.

And so it goes, year after year.

I am wistful about September’s quiet commencement despite no school or job to return to. There is a cool freshness in the air as breezes begin to pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees. 

I watch the days play themselves out. No longer do I feel I must direct each moment. 

And so it goes, and so it goes.
And you are the only one who knows.

Mrs. Bonnie Patterson’s fifth graders’ handmade desks
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Growing a Summer Miracle

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You must grow your own miracles.

Special has been hormoned
and hardened against the bump
and bruise. Pretty in the produce
aisle, but pithless and pitiful.

I prefer a nude stocking sling
for the heft, a slow blush,
not the red-on-arrival rouge
needled in the green-to-go.

In a hot June—the prize, only
once a year, the furrowed fruit
weighs down its stems for clipping
in your open hand, quite full
of tender skin.

Take care carrying
them to the kitchen, prepare
the bed of lettuce or only bread
and mayo, and oh! say a prayer before
you slice a single slice and lay
the flawless redness down and bite.
~Rick Maxson “Beefsteak”

As August fades away, I am impatiently watching our garden tomatoes ripen slowly. I hope they can soon be harvested, bulging red and ripe, a miracle on the vine, before the rains and blight set in. Then I can walk past the grocery store’s produce section with tomatoes displaying surface perfection and no flavor.

Ordinarily, I love and anticipate autumn’s arrival each year. Now, at seventy, I am autumnal year-round. The threat of seasonal blight leading to rot becomes personal. Lived out in real time, aging isn’t all “pumpkin spice” and “harvest gold.”

So who am I in this season of my life? I have been planted, weeded, nurtured, watered and warmed in anticipation of a glorious harvest. Before long, all must be gathered in.

The garden is a daily reminder: time is short, there is so much yet to get done.

AI image created for this post (just a little too perfect, aren’t they??)

Each Impossible Blossom

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There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun…
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again…

Soon now, I’ll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be singing.
~Mary Oliver from “The Pond” from Felicity

…what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-
that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

My friend Jean is a skilled gardener who has grown and hybridized dahlias for decades. What I see growing in the soil is her artist’s palette composed of petals, leaves and roots.

She has passionately cared for these plants; they reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.

From homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I stand captivated before each one, realizing that same Creator makes sure I too impossibly bloom from mere dust.

Then He sets me to work in His garden, singing.

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As August Breaks

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My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can’t confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I”

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
– Elizabeth Maua Taylor “August”

The endless clear skies of August
have been broken with clouds,
rain falling in warm gusts,
leaves landing on browned ground.

This summer ended up being simply too much –
an excess of everything bright and beautiful,
meant to make us joyful
yet bold and exhausting in its riches.

From endless hours of daylight,
to high rising temperatures,
to palettes of exuberant clouds
to fruitfulness and abundant blooms.

While summer always fills an empty void
after enduring cold spare dark days
the rest of the year,
I still depend on autumn returning.

I welcome darkening times back,
knowing how much I miss
those drear twilight months of longing
for the overwhelming fullness of summer.

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This song and video fits so well today – maybe a little weepy…

It’s Like a Sanctuary

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A gang of crows was chasing off
a hawk. The little stream was laughing
and shushing itself. The hawk’s reflection
briefly blurred a pool of water
and then the pool went back to waiting
for nothing or the next reflection.
The maple trees were yellow and red,
but redder farther up the stream.
I wanted especially to share
the cloud of redder leaves upstream
with the little girl I had with me,
but she was sleeping. Walking home,
I thought the willow trees around
the pond were standing up like brooms
to sweep the sky. That was the voice
in my head describing the willow trees
as brooms, a thought to stop the world
for a moment’s moment. She might have thought
the willows looked like lashes winking
around a deep-green eye,
but as I say, she was asleep
for this excursion in the world.
And she hasn’t told me yet about
the voice inside her head. For the moment
that voice is learning how to listen
to its own mysterious silence. I expect
it’s like a sanctuary in there
with a candle glowing at the back of the room
and violets dotting the grass outside.
~Maurice Manning “Violets in the Fall” from Snakedoctor

My internal voice remains a mystery.

Although I know the silent words I perceive are my own thoughts, there are times when I wonder it that voice is coming from a place deeper than my own brain’s meanderings. Mostly it feels like running commentary about what is happening around me.

I can be surprised though.

A word I seldom use will pop up in my thoughts, with wonder or puzzlement – where did that come from and why now? Perhaps my voice is not just mine alone…

I do aim for an expectant inner stillness. without being asleep to the world. Quieting a busy brain isn’t easy. We need to retreat often to an internal sanctuary of calm, with gentleness and self-kindness, and just enough illumination to light the way to a bit of insight and a wisp of wisdom.

I’ll keep the candle glowing in the back.

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