Flowers on the Brain
In the end, this may be the most important thing about frost: Frost slows us down. In spring, it tempers our eagerness. In fall, it brings closure and rest. In our gotta-go world--where every nanosecond seems to count--slowness can be a great gift. So rather than see Jack Frost as an adversary, you could choose to greet him as a friend.
Sleet, incidentally, is the worst five-letter four-letter word I know.
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
No real garden should ever show bare earth, much less a sea of bark mulch, which always represents both an opportunity lost and a failure of horticultural seriousness.
But gardening is the art of the frustratingly imaginable, of triumph against ridiculous odds, and even rock-gardeners, devoted to the cult and cultivation of the nearly-invisible, must sometimes dream grandiosely.
Gardening is not some sort of game by which one proves his superiority over others, nor is it a marketplace for the display of elegant things that others cannot afford. It is, on the contrary, a growing work of creation, endless in its changing elements. It is not a monument or an achievement, but a sort of traveling, a kind of pilgrimage you might say, often a bit grubby and sweaty though true pilgrims do not mind that. A garden is not a picture, but a language, which is of course the major art of life.
Good gardening is very simple, really. You just have to learn to think like a plant.
There is nothing like pruning a grapevine for training oneself to think like a plant.
There is nothing like pruning a grapevine for training oneself to think like a plant.
Gardening may be the most exasperating occupation under the sun, but it gives as much as it gets--no more no less. Life in a garden is one long war with the powers of Evil, but the victory is worth winning. Maddening catastrophes are followed by spectacular triumphs. One minute you are flat on your face, and the next you are soaring on the wings of the morning.
Marcescence is the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed. It is most obvious in deciduous trees that retain leaves through the winter. Several trees normally have marcescent leaves such as oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus).
It isn’t that I don’t like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.
