Final Blooms

Now that the air has cooled, the leaves are starting to change color and fall, and the sweatshirts have come out of moth balls (not really, who can stand the smell of those things?), I am looking at the end of my planting season. I do love to garden and tend to my flowers and blooms. For me, it is one of those few things in life that allow me to understand what it is to create and to nurture. Given I didn't create the seed or make the water and all the other elements required for success, but it is I who chose the plant and planted it into the earth. It is I that spent the hours tending and nurturing the plant to help it become what is possible.

Maybe it is the cold earth that I connect to. I hate wearing gloves as a gardener. I feel it becomes too clean of a task. Part of the experience is missing with gloves on. Sure the nails get embedded with dirt and microbes, but that's what soap and nail clippers are for. Occasionally there are scratches and pricks that leave their mark, maybe a spot of blood here and there, but that allows me to leave a little something of myself behind. The earth isn't clean, isn't without it's thorns and sharp edges. My hands are rough and show the scars left by an unruly rose bush or needled shrub branch, but as they say....it adds character. I like having the hands of a gardener, of showing the truth of who I am.

I also love finding worms and other creatures that call the dirt their home. Usually that tells me my soil is healthy. Finding some juicy night crawler means the soil is being aerated and my plant's roots will get the oxygen they need. Funny, that a one time dainty little girl now finds fun in draping a big, fat worm in between her fingers. Regrettably, my shovel has had its way with a few worms it has come in contact with, making one into two. The guilt is short lived as this doubles the worm number and becomes a gift rather than a death sentence.

But that is all starting to come to an end, for this year at least. Temperatures this weekend with be down in the 30s and 40s. My garden will start to shed its flowers (those which are still around) and the leaves will brown, fall, and begin to decompose. Dormancy will soon follow, and I will have to wait until next spring when the beauty of life begins all over again.