Saturday, June 4, 2011

Autumnal

Apologies for not reporting garden goings-on lately. I'll get around to it again shortly. At this time of year, colder and darker as it is, I have alot of maintenance work - beauty is discreet or fading. When I retreat indoors, I've been preferring to be writing/creating from out of my gardening experience instead. I wrote 'Autumnal' yesterday:






Though the light
is vanishing

hereabouts
( the cold
cutting through
like an axe ),

the vigour
mounting -

till this darkness
fell -
will sustain
( no harm/I feel no tax ).


Faisal Grant, June, 2011.

14 comments:

  1. Hello Faisal:
    In a season when there is so much in the way of decay, how much more promising to be creating in the comfort of the inside with words. This poem is beautifully, and so imaginatively presented, and, as always, fits so well your images.

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  2. Hello Jane and Lance,
    autumn is the best time to see Melbourne, in part because it's a European sort of city. Nonetheless, I notice how nurturing the indoors is, and I start to think of slow food. Perhaps autumn allows you distance from a world you're otherwise engaged in. The beginning of a hibernation, perhaps. I know you've had greater than normal heat in the UK, but how is Budapest in spring? Is it mild or does spring burst?
    Thankyou for your informed comments.

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  3. putting in your wood for the dark months? it's a year round job here.

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  4. Yes, Velma...a golden hakea ( native species ) has had to have its top cut off, due to neighbours' concerns about it blowing over. Hence, alot of mulch and a pile of logs. I find wood so beautiful though, I have to stop and look at it.

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  5. Hello Faisal:
    Spring in Budapest usually comes very rapidly after the cold of winter and is, compared with the UK, quite short.

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  6. As a fellow gardener I appreciate how you tie in metaphysics with you garden. My garden has been a place of renewal and refuge for me also. I wish you good luck on the challenge of rebuilding this garden. I garden too in area of constant drought and although I have irrigation I am always trying to make changes to conserve. have a great day!

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  7. We've been really lucky here, LVQ: it looked like the drought was here to stay, when, over the last year, rainfall and cooler temperatures returmed to better than normal. It was heartbreaking at times, what with severe water restrictions. You have it tough in southern California...but the 'problem' of drought can also throw up some wonderful design solutions. Thanks for your comment about metaphysics...you're right, a garden isn't just something to look at, is it?

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  8. Good luck with your garden building project - and your poetry. It's always fascinating for me, living in the northern hemisphere, to experience other seasons contemporaneously through blogs such as yours.

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  9. Your blog's a fine one, LL, so thankyou for that. I enjoy the vicarious exchange too...With winter coming on here, and the bare bones showing, it's nice to see some flooding green and mellow light from up north!

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  10. Great wood photos, adding depth of meaning to the words.

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  11. Thanks Catmint. Actually, having done this, I was a bit appalled it looked washed out, and I'm really wondering if posting poetry on a gardening blog is a good way to lure readers...

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  13. I didn't know that you also write beautiful poems, Faisal. Wood photos and the poem has embellished each other. The vigour in the poem especially stands out. Though the light is vanishing and the cold cutting through like an axe, the vigour mounting... We all have to feel like this in life. Whatever happens, we don't have to lose hope. Vigour all the time.

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  14. Yes, Sihirli...I was feeling how the incoming cold weather strips the shelter of the garden, but how the vigour built up in the warm months can be relied on to withstand it. Of course the poem is also about human resilience. Thankyou for saying the poem is beautiful. I have been writing poems since I was fourteen.

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