Ssshhhh...The garden is silent. There is no life left here above ground, just cold concrete angels that urge you to respect the dignity of life drawn deep into the frozen earth for winter. Dry grass, perennials become twigs, stone and stick, all that are left of the season past. Maidens, demurely dressed, dot the garden and dream to be someday embraced by flowers reborn on all sides. Patient, they wait for stories to grow, for life to spring forth from their pages, reading the future a season away.
In winter, ProfessorRoush's garden reflects his indoor life, reading now the primary entertainment in both locales. The angelic girl-child and the grown woman pictured here and engrossed in their books are both full-time inhabitants of my garden, weathering and softening as the years roll by. Neither will respond when you ask the topic of their study, for both live on a time scale beyond our fleeting lives. They wait, sparely changing as the seasons past, hot and cold, wet and dry as the sun and weather choose.
Inside, I join them, reading along in a more comfortable setting and weathering and softening in my own time. Stack of books wait on the nightstand and bookcase for my winter pleasure, each a quiet escape from the weeks between now and spring. I'm not sure where I'll start, fiction or nonfiction, fancy or facts, but the time for the feel of warm earth in my hands has past and will be replaced with a good solid book, warm and comfortable indoors while the sharp sunshine of a cold day waits outside my window.
In the garden, birds ring the feeders and rabbits hide from hungry hawks. A cardinal pair picks at the sunflower seeds, meal-worms wait for the bluebirds, and fat fluffy sparrows dart in for seed, a constant stream of greed. Besides these, the world waits again in frost for the sun to warm, and the remainder of my garden reads and rests with me.
In winter, ProfessorRoush's garden reflects his indoor life, reading now the primary entertainment in both locales. The angelic girl-child and the grown woman pictured here and engrossed in their books are both full-time inhabitants of my garden, weathering and softening as the years roll by. Neither will respond when you ask the topic of their study, for both live on a time scale beyond our fleeting lives. They wait, sparely changing as the seasons past, hot and cold, wet and dry as the sun and weather choose. 
Lovely! I do enjoy your statuary. And I have so many books stacked up, reading three at a time these days of cold and dreary gardens.
ReplyDeleteYes..."the world waits again in frost for the sun to warm...." I am doing a lot of reading these days. I thought this article in the NY Times was a lovely tribute to Winter: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/how-to-survive-winter.html
ReplyDeleteHappy Winter Stolstice for "[t]he great irony of winter is that the moment darkness is greatest is also the moment light is about to return. Each year the winter solstice comes with the promise that the next day will be brighter."
Yes, only a day from the Winter Solstice now and happy, I am!
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