Usually around this time of year I start to panic, look around and wonder where everything went? Where are the flowers, where is the order, how am I ever going to dig myself out of the mountain of debris that becomes the fall garden. This is when I find it useful to revisit pictures from seasons past and wax nostalgic over the dewy roses and the cheerful daffodils and the overabundance of violets.
I hold on to the flowers of spring.
Gardens have the magnificent privilege of reinventing themselves every year, which is why you always see them with fresh eyes and you don’t realize how old they really are. The oldest garden still in existence dates from the fifth century.
I looked through the pictures from previous years where no two seasons are the same, and yet the spirit of this collective living entity shines through, a very familiar presence and one that had become so dear to me over the years.
After fawning over the beautiful pictures I accidentally glance through the windows at the chaos outside and the lizard brain returns to panic mode, useless, as always, to test whether the garden is blooming less and less with each passing spring, to question whether the flowers are less beautiful, and to waste my time.
The garden is and it always will be beautiful and I love it with all my heart just the way it is.
Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”; "The Plant - A Steampunk Story"; "Letters to Lelia"; "Fair"; "Door Number Eight"; "A Year and A Day"; "Möbius' Code"
Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog
I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might use it in their own gardening practice.