Spring and Summer’s Path Through My Garden

It’s early September as I write this.  Early evening.  The sun now sits lower in the sky, and the time of day has nothing to do with this fact.  Shadows in September are long and meaningful.  First spring, and now summer, have traced their faithful arcs across the heavens and have trodden timeless paths over the land toward the crackling embrace of autumn and winter’s icy precipice, moving forever in time to the rhythm of an ageless measure.  The insects of the forest know this rhythm.  It is older than their race; and others like them called its very tune on an evening just like this one tens of millions of years ago.  The plants here – trees, flowers, grasses – know the rhythm.  They partake of a communion of both earth and sky, and perhaps know this rhythm as intimately as the changing seasons themselves know it.

On my patch of land here in the forest, I’ve chosen to grow a garden of cultivated plants.  These plants, ornamental and refined, have arisen in form and appearance as shaped by the efforts of man.  These growing jewels, with attractive foliage and beautiful flowers, owe their superficial beauty to the workings of botanists.  They owe their inner beauty – their essence – to nature.  And the plants of my garden share this essence with the plants of the surrounding forest.  These kin, my ornamental perennials and the forest growth, different only by the most tertiary and capricious of degree, grow and thrive within scant inches of each other, separated only by my fence.  They greet the same sunlight each morning, and are blanketed by the same darkness at each day’s end.  And they move to the same rhythm – the invariable cycle of the seasons.

I am humbled to grow my garden in the midst of the surrounding forest.  An infinitely greater gardener than I has created, sown, and tends the woodland growth, and the juxtaposition of my comparatively insignificant efforts is at once sobering and inspiring.  Watching my garden’s flora follow in step with the forest’s march to the seasons’ ageless rhythm represents the apotheosis of my work as a shepherd for these growing things within the boundaries of my garden.  I am awed, and again, humbled.  The slumber, awakening, thriving, and finally, once more, the slumber of my garden plants is a rhythm which I too must now know and follow…    

My apologies for the solemnity of the above bit of writing.  But I do feel that this incredible cycle of growth, death, and rebirth is miraculous and awe inspiring.  The inexorable pull of time, marked by the passage of the seasons, affects plants, animals, and mankind alike.  This rhythm, as demonstrated here by the living and growing cycle of each plant in my garden, I believe is worth noting.

Below, as testament to this undeniable rhythm, is a pictorial chronology of my garden throughout the spring and summer.  Just pictures.  I hope that my amateurish photography doesn’t interfere with the story.

Note:  There are a lot of pictures here.  Really, really a lot of pictures.  Please don’t feel obligated to look at them all.  This is sort of like looking at your neighbor’s home movies, or your co-worker’s sister’s neighbor’s grandkids’ pictures.  Except here, you don’t have to be polite.  Look at what you want and ignore the rest.  I do hope you’ll enjoy those that catch your eye.

J.G.S.