my gardening style is benign neglect.
but i really can't take
all the credit...the bones of the garden are fantastic, lending itself to this laissez-faire attitude of mine. through the seasons, my only complaint is that the gardener before me planted pink camellias, pink azaleas, pink dogwoods, pink flowering almond, pink! pink! pink!
fortunately, this time of the year, that color is largely absent.
in its place are the greens, golds, reds, and (sigh) pinks of autumn. today, i have been raking up the oak leaves and uncovering the moss that grows in our north-facing front yard and sheltered west-facing path. in the spring, lily of the valley grows there, beside the moss.
when we bought this house, we became only its second family. & shortly after we moved in, something necessitated that the former owners (at the time, in their eighties) come by.
as they left, the woman, who is the gardener responsible for the perfusion of pink, remarked on the nandina growing at the base of one of the oak trees & how much she always loved it, with its red, red berries, in the winter.
so, i will leave it be, even though it really seems out of place,
tucked, as it is, between the toes of the oak,
& remember that someone else loved this garden, too.
the high tomorrow is barely above freezing, so this might be the last day for the sasanqua camellia & its paper-thin flowers. earlier in the autumn, the sweet olive next to it competes for the bees - but today, this sasanqua pollen appears, to my unbee-like eyes, the last left in the garden.
then there is the arum italicum, a name i can never remember....otherwise known as "lords & ladies." the leaves which show in the autumn and winter are the 'lady' part of the name. in the summer, it produces a stalk of large green berries which ripen to psychedelic orange and are gobbled whole by the birds (honestly, it's reminiscent of a snake swallowing a mouse. i would say 'rat,' but that is disgusting.) the berries are actually considered poisonous and, if you were to decide to partake, seeing how excited the birds are to do so, your lips and tongue would be burned by the little calcium oxalate crystals contained in this deadly snack.
this was the summer of no.figs.not.even.one.how.very.sad.
the spring was wet.
the summer was cool.
we've allowed the neighboring (and sun-blocking) camellia
to grow-and-grow-and-grow.
it must be twelve feet tall by now.
so the figs were hard little dark green globes
that never became plump, maroon, sugary treats.
at least i have the memory of past summers (and, hopefully, future ones) -
of plucking a warm fat fig from the tree
and splitting it open with my thumbs
and devouring it on.the.spot.
to me, our crepe myrtle resembles a giraffe;
the bark molting and revealing undulating, entwined necks.
mostly, though, our garden is transitioning into winter hibernation. which isn't a bad idea.
