Garden's end

The winter garden--my winter garden in far western New Jersey--usually lasts into January or February, but when the garden interest diminishes sufficiently I look forward to the annual burning and cutting--firmly ending the year and preparing a clean palette for spring. Its lifespan, like ours, is unpredictable. Three days after I took these photos we had freezing rain and snow; that left most of the grasses looking like white humps in the landscape. Then it snowed again, and again, and again.What you see here no longer exists ...   All artifacts become like tombs, markers for something not present, the group of logs suggesting some kind of memorial, a place for gathering and remembering. Even the red mobile, a talisman with some undefined purpose. Does the view up to the house make you feel small, isolated, powerless, childlike?A garden's death takes many forms. Sunlight gives this dead Miscanthus a transient glamor ...... a glamor balanced by the black sentinels of Inula gathered at its side. About to do what? Standing, waiting?Now I look forward to wiping the field clean, a purifying ritual of fire and destruction. I'll walk the garden, once dry, with a torch, burning, then cutting.