I was mowing yesterday, wilting on the John Deere seat in the summer-like high 90's temperatures and seared by the blazing sun, but the garden was whispering to me a different story, a story of nearby endings and further beginnings. Hot though it was, the lightened foliage of the garden hinted everywhere at change, lush deep greens of spring and summer yielding to the lighter yellow-greens of fall at a frantic pace. These warm days will doubtless soon end, the summer of 2020 passing away at the speed of dying light.
Clues of change are evident everywhere I look now; roses on their last legs, like
'Snow Pavement' pictured at the left, blushing deeper pink with the onset of cooler night air and hastening her hip formation, seeds and stored life created to bridge past the long cold days to come. Other rose hips turn red and vibrant, tempting animals to consume and spread the seed, enticement enhanced with color, sugars, and vitamins as rewards for service. Who cultivates whom? The plant enticing the birds and mice to distribute its genes, or the fauna that benefits from consuming the fruit?
We are perhaps biased by Linnaeus, captive to his branching diagrams of phylogeny. Is the intelligence really in our higher branches or is the higher intelligence in the roots predating our arrival? Or maybe my thoughts are just influenced today by a recent read of 'Semiosis', philosophy and ecology disguised in the veil of science fiction.
This is the time of goldenrod and grasses, seedpods and tassels everywhere in the landscape of the deciduous climates, each grain a bid to the future. Even as I mow, this red Rose of Sharon fades in the foreground, blistering under the sun while the goldenrod behind it gathers and reflects the yellow sun, relishing its highest moment. I despair at the loss of these delicate August flowers, unrelieved by the few that struggle to blossom, false idols of beauty in the midst of a dying landscape. The goldenrod, too, will brown and pass on, leaving behind its brittle stems and summer's growth.
I couldn't ask for a richer tableau than these last clusters of
'Basye's Purple', and yet with their glory comes sadness at their hopeless future. A few more fleeting weeks of moderate temperatures and one night all the new pointed buds will inevitably be silenced in a freeze, the annual slaughter of innocence by ice. I grow tired and discouraged, the gardener reflecting the weary garden, a summer of toil behind and colder days ahead.
And yet, mowing further, I'm encouraged by hope, buds of tomorrow hidden deep in the shrubbery. The
fuzzy promise of Magnolia stellata tells me a different story, that spring is just around the corner and life is waiting, ready to bloom with vigor and fragrance, seeds of another spring hidden from the eyes of winter. I rested well last night, tired by the sun and work and quieted by the Star Magnolia, dreaming of her heavy musk and waxy petals, calmed by the sure knowledge that the Magnolia believes there will yet be another Spring.
I was mowing yesterday, wilting on the John Deere seat in the summer-like high 90's temperatures and seared by the blazing sun, but the garden was whispering to me a different story, a story of nearby endings and further beginnings. Hot though it was, the lightened foliage of the garden hinted everywhere at change, lush deep greens of spring and summer yielding to the lighter yellow-greens of fall at a frantic pace. These warm days will doubtless soon end, the summer of 2020 passing away at the speed of dying light. 
Clues of change are evident everywhere I look now; roses on their last legs, like 'Snow Pavement' pictured at the left, blushing deeper pink with the onset of cooler night air and hastening her hip formation, seeds and stored life created to bridge past the long cold days to come. Other rose hips turn red and vibrant, tempting animals to consume and spread the seed, enticement enhanced with color, sugars, and vitamins as rewards for service. Who cultivates whom? The plant enticing the birds and mice to distribute its genes, or the fauna that benefits from consuming the fruit? 
We are perhaps biased by Linnaeus, captive to his branching diagrams of phylogeny. Is the intelligence really in our higher branches or is the higher intelligence in the roots predating our arrival? Or maybe my thoughts are just influenced today by a recent read of 'Semiosis', philosophy and ecology disguised in the veil of science fiction.
This is the time of goldenrod and grasses, seedpods and tassels everywhere in the landscape of the deciduous climates, each grain a bid to the future. Even as I mow, this red Rose of Sharon fades in the foreground, blistering under the sun while the goldenrod behind it gathers and reflects the yellow sun, relishing its highest moment. I despair at the loss of these delicate August flowers, unrelieved by the few that struggle to blossom, false idols of beauty in the midst of a dying landscape. The goldenrod, too, will brown and pass on, leaving behind its brittle stems and summer's growth.
I couldn't ask for a richer tableau than these last clusters of 'Basye's Purple', and yet with their glory comes sadness at their hopeless future. A few more fleeting weeks of moderate temperatures and one night all the new pointed buds will inevitably be silenced in a freeze, the annual slaughter of innocence by ice. I grow tired and discouraged, the gardener reflecting the weary garden, a summer of toil behind and colder days ahead.
And yet, mowing further, I'm encouraged by hope, buds of tomorrow hidden deep in the shrubbery. The fuzzy promise of Magnolia stellata tells me a different story, that spring is just around the corner and life is waiting, ready to bloom with vigor and fragrance, seeds of another spring hidden from the eyes of winter. I rested well last night, tired by the sun and work and quieted by the Star Magnolia, dreaming of her heavy musk and waxy petals, calmed by the sure knowledge that the Magnolia believes there will yet be another Spring.
