Had I not grown up on a farm, I doubt that I would think
twice about harvest. Almost nothing in
my daily experience now suggests harvest.
Bean picking, corn shucking, tomato gathering, pea shelling, wheat
reaping, grain garnering are all things I left behind in Horry County, South
Carolina. Most have shrunk to a small
reflection now in the rear view mirror.
Nothing much suggests harvest except one thing: our flower garden.
In early autumn the garden comes to fruition, and with it
the labors and hopes that chose each plant, watered, fertilized, and tended it
through the long hot stretch of summer.
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| the young garden, 2015 |
Joe and I live in the bottom floor of a renovated townhouse
in Washington, DC. We have a walk about
twenty feet long and four feet wide leading from the street to our door. Because we live on the ground floor, it is
easy enough for us to claim that common space as ours. So we take about a third of the walkway and
on it plant a garden in perhaps twelve to eighteen pots of various sizes. Each spring we bring the containers out from
their winter storage, appearing somewhat to be holding a flowerpot sale. Small, big, medium, giant, high, and low pots
stand against the retaining wall like empty heads not knowing quite what’s
up.
Last spring we paid visits to two nurseries. We purchased enough plants comfortably to
fill each pot with its own unique blend of foliage and blossom. What could come off looking like a hodgepodge
actually works because we are fairly particular about choosing colors, both of leaves
and of flowers that blend nicely. This
year the pinks of verbena and zinnia stood brightly beside the deep burgundy of
coleus leaves, and the dark green leaves of basil and mint contrasted with a
near-chartreuse coleus. All profited
from a little splash of yellow lantana, and a nice small white flower that I
can’t for the life of me remember the name of.
Relatively cool weather for most of the summer, and gallons
upon gallons of water lugged from the bathroom faucet to the garden in series
of something like eight or ten trips per watering have kept the plants
healthy. Now, showing their strength in
the last weeks before frost, they are perfectly luxuriant. Bees rejoice in the stalks of little lavender
blossoms on the mature coleus plants. Basil steadfastly grows as if winter were an
apocalypse indefinitely postponed. Mint,
nearly used up about a month ago, flourishes again in its nice round bowl. Only the petunias seem leggy and spindly as
they enter old age. And even they show
no eagerness to stop blooming.
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| late August, 2016 |
Some of our oldest stories are tales from gardens. One of the most ancient of human vocations is
that of tending plants. We have no idea
how our ancestors cracked the code necessary to cultivate the olive, nor
exactly how they managed to learn the many secrets of the palm. Harvest, of course, is not something
relegated to a season, but goes on continuously through the growing cycle as
fruits are plucked from boughs and vegetables snapped off bushes and vines.
But what a marvel to behold the garden reaching full climax
as days shorten and temperatures fall!
One morning a month or two down the calendar I’ll walk out and see the
slain plants that rose from fragile to fruitful over the summer. The pots will be emptied and stowed before
Christmas. The anthurium and aglonemia
will become houseplants for the winter.
Our favorite plant that opens in the morning and closes up at night will
again sit on the bar if it hasn’t outgrown that space. And a few plants that can’t manage indoor
life will die creepily one leaf at a time.
 |
| almost harvest, 2016 |
I might have a few seasons left, perhaps many, before my
harvest. I am fascinated to imagine that
somehow I might manage to build to a crescendo before frost.
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2016
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