The speed of spring

Posted on May 16, 2026 by composerinthegarden

Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. ~Charlotte Brontë

Time for me these days is measured in garden time – the fits and starts of growth over days and weeks, never the same scene twice. The emergence of hints of green in early spring are transformed within a few weeks . . .

into a full throated chorus of rich textures and layers.

This has been a spring of extremes – days of hot weather, often over 80º F (27ºC) followed by days of bitter cold, with nighttime temperatures dropping to -20º F (-29º C), separated by a week of normal weather, and then repeated over and over throughout March and April. How anything in the garden survived is a mystery to me but also reassures me that nature is resilient beyond reckoning.

Fog arose after a February snowfall melted in sudden warm weather.

By April, the garden had changed from gray and brown to a full spectrum of color.

A violent wind storm in March

had unfortunate consequences for our neighbor’s house. We went to our basement to be safe but were thankfully spared any damage.

There are so many things to be done in the garden this spring. The Garden Conservancy Open Days tour on June 13 looms large on my “to do” list, pushing me to complete unfinished projects and make the garden ready for visitors. Special attention was given to the newer areas featuring native plants.

Each autumn our township collects all the fallen leaves from the neighborhoods and creates large compost mounds that decay for 3 years. They provide a mountain of leaf mold each April, free for the residents. My garden guys had already loaded and spread 3 cubic yards for me but I went back a week later to get another 1/2 yard to cover more of the woodland gardens. It is the perfect mulch for native plants – it improves the soil without triggering excessive growth.

The woodland plants reveled in their new coat of leaf moldwhile colorful blooms filled the sunny parts of the garden.

I was inspired to show the rate of change in the garden this year, which seemed to be captured best through video.

Wishing you a beautiful season of growth and blossoming!

It was a very good year

Posted on February 4, 2026 by composerinthegarden

Winter is always the best time to look back at last year’s garden. I love that I can suddenly forget the deep snow and bitter temperatures while immersing myself in photos and videos full of color and life. Now is the perfect time to look back at the garden in bloom, while ignoring the current view from my window. Window well filled with snow

It was an enormous relief to be able to take photos again after my shoulder healed from surgery in February. The April garden came alive with fresh green leaves and delicate spring flowers. view of April garden from above

May burst over the edges of the garden beds and it was hard to choose just one photo. The entrance to the circle garden is one of my favorite views, an arbor covered in roses and surrounded by other flowers in May. Arbor covered with pink roses and surrounded by pink flowers

Did you know that human eyes can detect more shades of green than any other color? The endless rains in June made for lush foliage in both garden and woods – this scene spoke to me, inviting me to enter the green green woods.

July became a riot of color from the daylilies and summer perennials, yet the foliage spoke almost as loudly on a misty day. View of the circle garden from the deck in July

August was prime pollinator season, with insects gathering as much food for winter as possible. Echinacea purpurea was especially attractive to both humans and bumblebees.

The rains returned after a dry July and August and the garden was often enveloped in fog and mist. The arbor into the circle garden once again became a favorite view, inviting me to linger under it and study the layers of the garden.

Circle garden entrance in September

Enveloped by the same fog, the woodland walk matured quickly in its second year thanks to the heavy rains of spring and fall. The was Pixie’s favorite spot to keep watch in the woods. Woodland walk in fog in September

The low brilliant light of October mornings made for drama in the front walk.

By November, bright color had moved from the flowers into the leaves, a riot of autumn hues. Autumn leaves in the garden

I gathered my favorite video clips in a similar fashion, portraying each part of the circle garden and woodland walk through the seasons.

With 2025 behind us, I wish you a new year of beauty, laughter, and great adventures as 2026 unfurls before you.

Autumn – the beautiful denouement

Posted on November 23, 2025 by composerinthegarden

Denouement is a French word that literally means the action of untying, from a verb meaning to untie. Noun: the outcome of a complex sequence of events

The leaves have untied themselves from the trees, or perhaps they were gently let go. Generously covering the garden beds and the forest floor, they color the world in tones of gold, orange, rust, and brown while returning the nutrients to the earth in an ancient process of release, decay and regeneration.

Autumn was a long languorous process, with its first hesitant steps in September proceeding through stages of leaf color change and ultimate descent to the earth.

Every day, the stroll through the garden was different. The early morning sun could cast fiery color and deep shadows or it could be filtered through a gentle mist that saturated the leaves and enhanced the rich range of autumnal color.

At last the storms and winds prevailed and the fall of leaves over a few days and weeks was spectacular. I was able to capture some of the magical moments of this process in video.

You may be in the southern continents where spring is now emerging, or in a tropical zone where there is no autumn. The earth is a wide and wonderful place and I have been privileged to see much of it in person. Yet, there is something about autumn in the northern continents that tugs at my heart, the dramatic shift in color and the subtle earthy scents of a world renewed by the long arc of seasonal change. Wherever you are on this planet, I hope that you can savor the beauty and sweetness of denouement, the end of one season and the beginning of another.

The beauty around us

Posted on September 30, 2025 by composerinthegarden

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. ~Mary Oliver

After a seven week-long drought, four days of slow steady rain arrived exactly on the September equinox. The constant rain healed the deep cracks of dried earth and gradually refreshed and revived the trees, plants, and wildlife. Constant morning fog was catnip to this photographer.

The sweet smell of dry earth refreshed by rain, known as petrichor, filled my senses for days. The woodland path held that scent the longest, the first place Pixie and I explore each morning.

The ferns and sedges came back to life quickly, as green as if it were spring again.

The circle garden was showing some tattered damage from the weather extremes, but somehow looked gloriously lush in the fog.

I was struck by the layers and textures in this photo, so I decided to create a black and white version.

In some ways, I like this one better, as it emphasizes the layers and depth as well as the range from light to dark in this part of the garden. What do you think?

In contrast, the copper corner was a riot of color that required the full spectrum treatment.

Everywhere I walked, everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by notes of beauty. I began to notice the smallest lovely detail and the largest sweep of color and texture. I was walking through a liminal moment in time, the earth balanced between a change in seasons while the fog seemed to stretch and elongate that moment in an otherworldly fashion.

I tried to capture those moments of beauty in the garden with this video, hosted by the inimitable Miss Pixie.

And finally, I was editing photos for this post on my back deck when I suddenly realized that the late afternoon light had changed to a rosy glow. I looked up from the laptop and saw glimpses of a vibrant sunset through the trees. Entranced, I spent the next half hour simply watching the sunset deepen and finally fade. I’m not adept at taking sunrise or sunset photos but my friend Mary Pegher is. With her permission, I’m including one of her stunning images of sunrise over a foggy lake in our nearby county park. Oddly enough, I had asked Mary if I could include her photo in this post a day before I experienced that beautiful sunset. Synchronicity lives. Photo credit: ©Mary Pegher 2025 Used with permission.

I hope you are having a marvelous change of seasons wherever you live and that you find yourself surrounded by moments of beauty in the coming days.

The August garden – imperfectly perfect

Posted on September 6, 2025 by composerinthegarden

The garden in late summer is an odd contradiction of flowers swarmed by feasting pollinators Bumblebees on Echinacea and plants, having fulfilled their seasonal life cycle, now tipping into senescence. Dead leaf caught in grass inflorescence

There is no stopping this process – it is life in the garden and the world, the dynamic of change and imperfection.

One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. . . Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
~ Stephen Hawking

Without the cycle of organic death and decay, the moss and mushrooms would have no place to grow and thrive.

Mushrooms growing on a mossy log

Tucked in the brown stems of a native iris that bloomed in May, a spider web is strung with drops of rain like a miniature Indra’s Net in the garden.

Long gone is the youthful beauty of June and July, when everything was fresh and colorful. But every day I treasure the richness and wildness of late summer, the garden overflowing with abundance.

The lines of the paths and arches are now blurred by plants freely growing past their boundaries.

Late blooming perennials like the hardy begonia promise fresh new flowers, Hardy begonia buds

while an annual amaranth drapes to the ground with a full season’s worth of bloom. Amaranth flowers

Late summer, more than any other time in the year, contains that full circle of seasons, a crescendo of life well-lived, the ebb and flow of a garden in all its imperfectly perfect beauty. Enjoy this stroll through the garden buzzing with life in August.

I wish you joy in the inherent wildness underlying this season of abundance, growth, and change.

composerinthegarden

Gardening in harmony with nature

Category Archives: Garden