On the Edge of Stillness

We may have our first frost tonight, only 3 days past the average. As I took pictures the last few days, I knew I was preparing, in my own overly nostalgiac / American way, for the end of the best gardening summer I've ever had--and seemingly the quickest. The garden, in its 3rd full year, was thick and lush, harboring insects and birds and mammals of massive diversity. Spiders were more numerous than ever. Butterflies I'd never seen before came in to nectar on plants I forgot were there. Right now, the many native asters are flooded, deluged, bombarded with 6-legged creatures that, backlit by the sun, look like stirred up pollen themselves.

But these images, the stills, are not so still. As the leaves take in tonight's inevitable chill and as the sugars begin to siphon down to the roots, the soil will come alive with the winter rush of expanding roots. And next year will be even better, for the wildlife I have yet to know, and for the person I have yet to fully know through this place. I look forward to sitting on the bench in January, in the cold silence and absence, and fully hear the garden (surely it's impossible to correctly hear the garden in summer, to pick through the mass and confusion of unfettered growth and visible life).


Burnt red sedum, liatris seed spikes, asters, coreopsis





White boltonia, purple and blue asters, sedum, miscanthus




Indian grass spilling out toward asters
















Garden entrance






















Turtlehead & sweet autumn clematis






















Surprise fall crocus



Wild senna seed pods backlit by sunset






















Aster bloom closing on sleeping bumblebee at night

















Male monarch on 12' tall 'Jonesboro Giant' ironweed