Harvest

There is always something nostalgically magic to me about leaving the house in the dark for a road trip. Anticipation. Adventure. Mystery. The full moon Saturday morning leap-frogs back and forth across the interstate as it sinks lower and lower into the pale pink sky; the sun rising big and bright in the rear-view mirror. I do love being out in the dawning day. And road trips. And heading for the mountains.

Not long after the star power of the sun banishes the moon to nothingness, I come upon another unexpected treat on my journey: a hot air balloon "event." Dozens of bright shapes dot the Carolina blue backdrop of sky. In my hurry to get to grandson Max’s soccer game, however, I do not join the cars pulled off on the shoulder of the interstate. I almost immediately regret it. I get to the soccer field fifteen minutes before my favorite player does, but of course it is too late to go back and spend the fifteen minutes watching the balloons. How often we forget that we can choose to seize the moment; moments that we cannot get back in our haste to keep moving to the next thing and the next.

Autumn color in the highlands is ahead of the seasonal change in the Piedmont; the golds and reds brilliant among the greens. Every now and then a burst of wind harvests the leaves on the trees and they swirl through the air in a magical tumult of color. May Sarton, one of my favorite writers, wrote in one of her journals, “I think of the trees and how they let go, let fall the riches of the season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep...Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let go.”

As I watch Max playing outdoors at his family’s mountainside home, I recall my own childhood on the side of a hill. I am sad again that my children grew up on city streets and in subdivisions. And that I live in the flatlands. I try to conjure up my garden and my cozy home to reassure me that I live where I need to be right now, but the image pales––like the moon when the sun comes up. I remind myself that this always happens when I am in the North Carolina mountains or the Pacific Northwest, and that I will be fine when I am back home; I allow myself to just be glad that I am where I am right now. Sit it out. Let the grief pass. Let go. The leaves will return in the spring; and one day I will return to my heart home, if only for another visit.

Autumn is a time of fruition and celebrating the harvest. I picked two large baskets of green tomatoes last weekend. In spite of warm days, the cool nights––while greatly appreciated by me––are not good for tomatoes. Apparently. They are falling off the vines. And so I picked them. Lots of them. I searched the internet for recipes and spent a relaxing Sunday afternoon halving, chopping, or roasting small green tomatoes. Mixing flour and sugar; mincing garlic and shredding cheese. I made soup, a savory pie and a sweet pie, sweet bread, savory muffins. Who knew there was so much to be gained from unripened tomatoes––the harvest from volunteer plants.

Friends have asked to come to see my garden this week. It feels like an odd time to share it. The bright green explosion of spring is a distant memory. The wealth of summer color is past. The summer drought has stressed the plants that might still be thriving. Although the late-season daylight warmth that is part of living in the South has brought a last-gasp resurgence of bloom, at the same time I watch the ferns and hostas, the Solomon seal and peonies make their descent back to the earth. There was a time when I might have encouraged garden visitors only when the garden was at it “best.” But as I continue to live into the cycles of the garden, I realize that I do not control it. I do not have to be embarrassed by its decline or that my friends are not seeing it at its most beautiful. The garden is what it is in all the seasons. Observing the garden in the fall brings me and my visitors in touch with the rhythms of our lives, and with our own wild and ever-connected souls. All of life is cyclical: the moon, the garden, our lives. The garden is meant to be shared. In every season. Something is always happening there; whether or not it is visible. And it is always beautiful.

Autumn has not quite arrived here. The days are still too warm, the leaves are barely turning color. My soul is ready to turn inward, and I am annoyed that there is an 85 degree day coming up in the week’s forecast. But the seasons cannot be rushed. I want to be finished with the garden and come inside, wrap up in a blanket, and be quiet; but the still unfrozen ground encourages me to start a project that I have been resisting. It is the very last thing, that has been revealed to me, I want to create here. I want to plant roses in front of my house. And I am afraid. It feels bigger and riskier than planting pansies and sunflower seeds. It is somehow something that has to succeed or I will have wasted money and made something irreversibly ugly. But the weather pushes me to make a start. And so I dig out two of the four boring shrubs at the front of my house. I know that having some of the hard work done now, will get me started on completing the project when the ground thaws in the spring.

Opening up, once again. Creating space for what might come next. I don't know what it will look like, or exactly what the next step will be. It might be risky and irreversible. But the ground will be ready. I will be ready.