The End of Summer: Redux
Back in early September of 2021, I clogged your device screens with hundreds of photos from my garden in a feature called “Spring and Summer’s Path Through My Garden.” It was an image-laden review published per multiple requests from RGG readers and subscribers looking for shots of my garden. What follows here, “The End of Summer: Redux,” is a re-publishing of the somewhat elegiac preamble about summer’s impending conclusion that I wrote for that earlier feature. For those of you who may be interested in these thoughts, I’ll save you the trouble of trying to extricate them from the 2021 feature, and just lay them out for you, as they originally appeared, right here. This one’s short and sweet, gang.
Excerpt from 2021’s “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.
J.G.S. September, 2021
Short and sweet, right?
For any of you with an interest in checking out the original feature from 2021, here’s the link: “Spring and Summer’s Path Through My Garden.”
Thank you, dear readers and subscribers, for indulging me. As always, I’m grateful for your interest and your readership.
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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You are such a good writer. Enjoyed this piece as it made me reflect on the rhythm of my own gardens- places I have gardened, and the beauty of the cycle. Thank you, John.
GreenHeart Gardener
Thank you so much, Lane – it’s great to finally put a name to that fabulous handle of yours! Your words and thoughts here are so kind, Lane. I truly appreciate this. I’m so glad you liked the piece, and again, I’m grateful for your lovely compliment. That amazing cycle really is all-poweful, and completely impossible to deny. You, as a gardener of no small experience, are undoubtedly acutely aware of it, and sensitive to all of its subtleties and nuances. Thank you once again, Lane – I’m so glad you liked the piece and shared your kind and wonderful thoughts. All the best, Lane!
What a beautiful way to end summer and welcome fall… You always capture the magic and put it into words for us… Thank you for all the amazing beauty of your garden shared with us through beautiful images of your flowers and all the little creatures that are enjoying the environment…. 🙏❤️🌺🦋
Thank you so much, Roxxy! The end of summer is always a bittersweet time for me. (Sigh.) I’m glad you liked reading my take on the subject. And I’m really happy that you like my pictures. I’m definitely a lousy photographer, but the flowers and the little creatures are the stars, and I think that they’ve got more than enough beauty to make up for my picture-taking shortcomings. Thank you once again, Roxxy!
What a perfect picture to share, with your words.
Thank you, Everly. I thought it was a pretty good shot, too. Even though I snapped it earlier in the summer, I thought it told a pretty good story about how the woods and the cultivated growth inside my fence share the same sun, experience the seasons together, etc, etc, etc. Thanks for reading this one, and thanks for the kind compliment on the pic. I’m definitely not a photographer, but my subjects are generally pretty enough to save the day. Thanks again, Everly.
John, your words capture the eternal cycle. The most comforting thought to remember as we see our gardens give way to fall and the coming winter is knowing that spring is eternal. Next year nature will repeat that cycle once again. Spring is so glorious!
Thank you, Kevin. I’m glad you feel that I was able to accurately describe this endless process and express my observations in comprehensible fashion. Your thoughts regarding spring’s inevitability are accurate and comforting. Thank you once again for your kind words and wonderful thoughts, Kevin. They’re truly appreciated.
You wrote beautifully about your garden surrounded by a forest. The cycle of birth, growth, death and re generation is awe inspiring.
Thank you for giving this one a read, Rick. I’m so glad that you enjoyed it. Living with these plants as I do (both the cultivated variety in my garden and the wild trees and plant life of the forest), I’m acutely aware of these cycles and rhythms. I’m remarkably fortunate to experience this level of undeniable perception. Life on this planet really is miraculous. Thanks once again, Rick.