Harvest comes soon,
the greens rich and deep,
how touchable, sniffable
the twining leafed keep.
A scruffy-kneed gardener
with nails edged in black
beams notwithstanding
the crick in his back.
It’s ever a miracle —
don’t try to explain
how seeds and a longing
are linked in life’s chain.
With thanks again to my back-yard gardener son,
for both the photo op and the basil!
In harvest bronze the morning sun
gilds the whorling dill:
the year is old but be it known
that there’s a new day still.
And newness goes with every seed
into a time unknown,
bearing fragile hope
from the present that we own.
I’ve written tomato posts before
I hope another won’t annoy ya
this is, I think, but half tomato
the other half’s sequoia.
For many years I’ve planted tomatoes in memory of my Grandpa Mauck. The smell of the plant always brings him back for me. Alas, the smell was about the extent of my harvest. I just couldn’t grow tomatoes. Until last year. Suddenly those Mauck gardening genes roused up, and I had actual tomatoes! I especially loved the pear tomato, so this year I tried another one, and, even though it was planted late and spindly, and in Someone Else’s Garden, it rallied and has taken exuberance to a whole new level, racing over and through the deck rail, and draping itself over the potted plants. I know that one morning I’ll wake up and find it wound around my ankle.
A pear tomato, marigolds, zinnias, dill…as you can see, dear reader, the garden is slowly, slowly becoming mine. (MINE, you wretched rabbits and Japanese beetles and chipmunks, MINE! Not YOURS!!)
Twelve long-stemmed roses —
elegance! thrill!
But can they compare
to a harvest of dill?
Is it the proud posture of the dried lavender
or the fragrance teasing me from the photo
that makes me hover over it?
It may well be the old homey bushel basket,
with its metal hands stretched up to mine —
sure sign of harvest.
Welcome, autumn!
And thanks, Bill, for sharing this photo from the S. W. Berg archives!
And thanks, Donna, for making the word “connections” a vibrant one. From the D.J. Berg archives.
It was my writing mate Tamara who suggested I accept the challenge of posting a photo a day for August. Thanks to her, I discovered the powerful connection between photography and writing. For me, a big surprise. (She knew, of course.) Though August is over, I am continuing, best I can, with the photo a day.
Besides, we are going into my favored half of the year, as I described in Clock two years ago. It merits the daily record. So, dear reader, onward! With photos!
Oddments 