A garden is a living thing

A garden is a living thing and we are wise to remember that.

There is a constant cycle of life occurring each day.

New flowers open, old flowers fade. Seeds drop to the ground and lie dormant, waiting for the right time and the right conditions to germinate.

New leaves unfurl in the spring, hang around all summer, then in the fall, they cease their chlorophyll production. Their green color fades and let’s the yellow or red or orange make its appearance known, before the leaves lose their grip and the wind carries then off to places near and far.

When the leaves land on the ground, a village full of micro-organisms, insects, and even earthworms pounce upon them and slowly, surely, devour them, leaving behind compost.

There are insects in all their stages of life hanging around the garden, some literally hanging as cocoons from branches, others hidden on the undersides of leaves. Rabbits, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, even birds, are born in our gardens and may live their whole lives in our gardens.

A garden is a living thing, and we are wise to remember that we are also living things. We go through cycles of life, too. There are time when we have plenty of energy and agility and the time to spend it on our gardens.

There are other times when we lack the time, or the energy and agility, or both, and the garden becomes a wild living thing. It begins to run from us, and we must figure out how to catch it, retrieve it, and bring it back to its place as a garden.

It’s all part of the cycle of life, because a garden is a living thing and was never intended to always be the same. It will grow and change, mature and adapt, just as we do.

We are wise to remember that.