Garden, late fall

Those of you who follow this blog know that when I bought my house I bought the responsibility of gardening, and I've tried to step up to the plate and do right by it.

I've posted photos of the garden bed in the front, the sunny one--in spring, in summer (can't find those, so no link), and in fall. It's always beautiful.

And here it is now, in very late fall, before being cut down and put to sleep for the winter. Although you might say it's dead, it's really not; it's just resting.

Even in this brown and faded state, it seems quite beautiful nonetheless, in a sad and subtle way. At least, I think so. And strangely enough, the roses are still in bloom.






Last year I published this same poem around this same time. It's Robert Frost's "Reluctance," very appropriate to the season:

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?