Having been doing some major skiving on work front to try to restore order to the allotment and fend off winter starvation. Four long days of planting the onions, spring cabbages, garlic and loads of flowers such as cornflowers, echium, larkspur, campanulas. Paths are mown and despite the end of summer shambolicness, the site is glorious, especially with a low autumn sun shining through the corn tassels and illuminating the squashes. Everything seems burnished and luminous, a mixture of orange, russets and golds. There are still fat cobs to be had and the tomatoes are heavy on their vines, almost touching the soil. I love this season more than any others - everything seems so lush but slightly askew, even a bit tattered. I am usually a prosaic sort, never given to flights of romance regarding the sacred earth, the glory of creation or the numinous, but i have to admit to feeling uplifted and harmonious, even at one with my fellow humans (and I am certainly something of a misanthrope, preferring plants to people). There is a poignant quality, always to autumn, especially when the leaves start to turn. It seems as though the plants on my plot are indulging their green lives with outrageously glamourous end days like some fading but defiant hollywood diva. I felt both priviledged and fortunate to have found the intense pleasures of gardening - unwanted and unasked for, it still sort of found the chink through scorn and cynicism via the cunning wiles of a particularly prolific lavatera. How could I have known how overwhelmed i would be by the seemingly endless velvet blossoms. How could I have known how easy and rewarding lavateras are? By the time I tasted abject failure with the gardenias (obviously), I was hooked. Ah well, every season has charm but autumn is surely the most golden.
