Garden Diary: Fullness

Already late November and autumn still shows in seed, stalk, tussock, falling leaf... brown, gold, russet, almost black.

The dirt is wet and cold and growing colder. Sun is low, barely clearing trees encircling the garden and light is broken almost all day long, hardly ever straight on and bright.


This is the season of seedheads and dry grasses still anchored in the earth, stirred by occasional wind, hinting return next spring or in more distant summer. Rain, snow will fall, ice form, rarely crystalline ice that makes jewels of empty seed pods and broken stems. Dark clouds, fog, dreary days, night.

Then with a tilting earth, a higher sun, warmth will return to bring back green larger and more numerous.