Afternoon, autumn light is dappling through the bare maple tree into my lavender, parsley and sage. Spots of color jump out. An orange pumpkin sits on the rock wall. A gold calendula, a purple hyssop spire, a cluster of rosy crabapples, one last shockingly white daisy, light up my faded herb bed. The ground is littered with crunchy brown leaves. It is an exquisite fall day. I am in awe.
I took fifteen minutes today to just sit. I realize that this is the first ‘just sit’ I have had all summer and summer is over. Inside on my desk is an ‘impossible to accomplish, but must get done list,’ but this chair, warm sunshine before a long winter, bees busy with one last go for it, and fall color (I can’t keep my eyes on the page) is more than I can resist. I am actually sitting here with a ratty old note pad and pen, not a laptop.
My garden is a good place right now. The weeds are making a weak effort at reemergence, compost having been laid. Deadheading is fruitless at this point and despite the mild frosts we’ve had, the garden is still green. It is amazing how I can go through my days with such a sense of time running out, that I don’t just sit with a cup of tea and look around me. During any allotted quiet time I am usually reading the mail, writing, popping out of my chair to pull a couple weeds, or making a phone call. Fifteen minutes is such a small amount of time in the course of a day and there is no better place than my garden right now. Dropping temperatures, hard frost and snow in the mountains is forecasted for this weekend. Now is the time. It won’t be long before this sunshine and color will only be found on the glossy pages of a catalogue spread out on my lap.
