An ordinary autumn day

A purple leafed plant

It’s October. It’s a beautiful sunny day, but the chill the morning brought reminds me that it’s autumn. The sun feels different in its way, warm and cool simultaneously. The light different, as if inviting me inward.

I hear the buzz of the lawnmower in the next garden. My husband painting the fence before winter. I too turn to the garden. It needs some water. The heat of the summer has done its work and even though there’s been a little rain, the thirst is clear. There’s a wilting that doesn’t seem to be autumn alone, the scorching heat that came to bear. I water the dead lavender plant in the hope that the resilience of nature redetermines its fate.

I love that about nature, it’s dogged determination. Where concrete lies, tree roots break through in defiance. The paving cracked with green. Mother Nature is having none of it. I wonder how much we can rely on her resilience now?

I pick the lavender seeds, not quite knowing what I’m doing but the scent, the familiar and warming scent of lavender soaks my hands as I pour the seeds into the jar. And I wonder why wasn’t I taught any of this at school? How to care for the plants that feed us, that give to us so generously. How we can only breathe with them, what an epic thing. Please don’t take this for granted I can hear on the wind. There is no wind. Perhaps the breeze or a conversation between me and all that’s green.

I pull up some weeds. And I wonder why we call such green, weeds? And the vivid yellow of the dandelion. It’s beauty, it’s metamorphosis, and all the dandelion gives. How these plants offer us such goodness, such medicine and we’re so quick to tear them down. Can we pause? Can we wonder?

I find some purple leaves, are these weeds too? Or one of my planting experiments where I plant something I know nothing of and hope for the best. They’re too beautiful to lose. Light purple, graced with a darker purple at it’s edges, the triangle leaves splayed out, upside down, inside out, creating the most beautiful shape, like they could be a windmill of purple.

I tidy the garden and think of the juxtaposition. I use the broom to sweep the dead leaves away from the path. I take a cloth to the window and brush away the cobwebs. And in my heart I’m wondering what I’m disturbing, what little creatures may be living under leaf or web. I don’t want to disturb too much. And why do we tidy anyway?

Once a magpie flew into our house. I was asleep in the middle of the day, I wonder why now, perhaps the body needing rest. Or a mother that hadn’t slept. And I woke to this noise, this noise that I couldn’t place or recognise. As I came to, I stretched my hearing to make sense of it all and I couldn’t. I got out of bed and tentatively followed the sound, what was here in my house? I peered into the bathroom to see a magpie ferociously flapping around, disorientated by it’s surroundings. I close the door. A fear of birds from a young age, that comes in where they’re up close in this way. I once had a pigeon come in through the chimney too. And these birds show me something. Not for one minute do I think they’re in my home, but my home is on theirs. This is their home. Could it be our home?

The concrete that tries to dominate but mother nature resists. The homes we build that are so easily like a feather in the hands of our mother. I marvel at this. How precious this life is. And I wonder again why aren’t we taught how to grow food at school, how to care for the things that give us life, that we can use for healing and remedies and to breathe. WE BREATHE. Instead we are taught to take and resist. Curious this way.

I built a garden room and I was told to pave it all, by all that had an opinion. No! I’d taken enough with the room, grass and trees and I dream that perhaps one day a pond will be here, building the ecosystem so that we can live together.

I can still smell the lavender in the cracks on my hands. Grateful for these hours with the garden, with the plants. I hope they’ll forgive me, that I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m willing to try. Willow I will replant you, put you in the ground rather than the pot you’re living in now. I’ll move the lavender too, and hope it comes back to life. I’ll watch the leaves change from green to yellow, to brown. And I’ll let autumn do what it will with me. I’ll let winter do what it will with me. I trust these seasons more than I ever have. I marvel at how trees become dormant and are still very much living at the same time. What can we learn here?

And I wonder what grief will sit by my side as the darkness comes in to greet me in these autumn and winter days.