Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Harvest
The last tomatoes in the garden are clinging to the vine, doing their best to ignore the change in season. It is my neighbor's garden, and because these are not my tomatoes, I can afford to be philosophical about them.
It occurs to me that the basic strategy of these vegetables is a mistaken one. The biological winners will be those that accepted their fall with grace weeks ago, when the ground was still warm and welcoming. Next year they will be the ones to produce new seedlings.
What is it, I wonder, that keeps these last fruits hanging on? Is it hope? Fortitude? Perseverance? Or just a bad sense of timing?
Timing is essential to the art of living: knowing when to hang in there and when to let go, when to struggle and when to surrender, knowing how to recognize the seasonable changes of our lives.May we be blessed with the wisdom of good gardens.
by Gary Kowalski, from Green Mountain Spring and Other Leaps of Faith, published by Skinner House in 1997
The last tomatoes in the garden are clinging to the vine, doing their best to ignore the change in season. It is my neighbor's garden, and because these are not my tomatoes, I can afford to be philosophical about them.
It occurs to me that the basic strategy of these vegetables is a mistaken one. The biological winners will be those that accepted their fall with grace weeks ago, when the ground was still warm and welcoming. Next year they will be the ones to produce new seedlings.
What is it, I wonder, that keeps these last fruits hanging on? Is it hope? Fortitude? Perseverance? Or just a bad sense of timing?
Timing is essential to the art of living: knowing when to hang in there and when to let go, when to struggle and when to surrender, knowing how to recognize the seasonable changes of our lives.May we be blessed with the wisdom of good gardens.
by Gary Kowalski, from Green Mountain Spring and Other Leaps of Faith, published by Skinner House in 1997
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