A new house means a new garden and a farewell to hardy established plants and growing cycles. It is exciting to begin a new garden, to learn from past mistakes and triumphs. While winter may be the time to build these new constructions, I see little to do once the soil, straw and compost are layered neatly in their little beds. A pea planted here or there will be nothing to the frenzied planting of a few months time.
I cannot decide if I prefer spring or summer in the garden. Spring is exciting as soil unveils it's tender little offerings into the air, everything shooting and budding and full of promise. All is lime-green potential, crisp mornings and rosy hued sunsets. Summer is, by comparison, showy, obvious, a corner hussy advertising her wares. All is forbidden fruit and broken promises. The ripeness of fruit ready for the picking is somehow tinged with the regret of death, of rotted flesh, of seasons ebb. A flower only blooms for so long. A fruit ripens but a short while before descending into decay. As the parsley bolts to seed I try to prune and prune and prune, somehow delaying the inevitable parsley-free period of the year. Yet at summer's end, who can deny the beauty of Autumn, the last sweet tomatoes off the vine, the figs and quinces asking for a syrupy baking and a generous splodge of cream. Aahh, comfort food, hello my old friend. Winter is the quiet achiever of the bunch, a severe schoolmarm who forces us to eat our greens. The much maligned brassica is, luck would have it, the friend of bacon and anchovies and there's always dessert if we manage to get through our veg.
I cannot decide if I prefer spring or summer in the garden. Spring is exciting as soil unveils it's tender little offerings into the air, everything shooting and budding and full of promise. All is lime-green potential, crisp mornings and rosy hued sunsets. Summer is, by comparison, showy, obvious, a corner hussy advertising her wares. All is forbidden fruit and broken promises. The ripeness of fruit ready for the picking is somehow tinged with the regret of death, of rotted flesh, of seasons ebb. A flower only blooms for so long. A fruit ripens but a short while before descending into decay. As the parsley bolts to seed I try to prune and prune and prune, somehow delaying the inevitable parsley-free period of the year. Yet at summer's end, who can deny the beauty of Autumn, the last sweet tomatoes off the vine, the figs and quinces asking for a syrupy baking and a generous splodge of cream. Aahh, comfort food, hello my old friend. Winter is the quiet achiever of the bunch, a severe schoolmarm who forces us to eat our greens. The much maligned brassica is, luck would have it, the friend of bacon and anchovies and there's always dessert if we manage to get through our veg.
So, like the book and the song say, to every thing there is a season, a time to plant, a time to reap. There is beauty and anticipation in every season. But for me, this year, spring has got my name written all over it.
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