Gold

What a garden does in one year it takes the rest of us a lifetime to accomplish.

Long days of faithful, okay, sometimes not-so-faithful tending, punctuated by fugitive moments of germination, bud, and bloom is how gardeners mark the passage of time. Every year is new, but traces of the old remain, a palimpsest of past blooms, berries, and beans.

Maybe because I was an October baby, I am especially tuned to the shift in fall, a season of both fruition and depletion. Ample moisture and forgiving temperatures refresh parched plantings. Autumn is both a temporary reprisal of spring and a liminal threshold to dormancy.

The sun drops on the horizon burnishing fall foliage and illuminating petals and seed heads with a flattering side light. A cast that my aging self has come to treasure. Even the funk of wet autumn leaves, a sweet stink of decay that’s one part burnt sugar, one part moldering damp towel, lends depth to the glow.

To the non-gardener, and maybe for those uncomfortable with watching a garden age, the fall season can appear a bit shopworn and tired. But for those who look closely, abundance and generosity are everywhere. This is the time of ripening pods and seed-harvesting season—the foundation of next year’s garden, when everything begins again.

The above essay appears in my book, Color In and Out of the Garden from Abrams