Gold in Its Pocket

Posted on November 5, 2017 by composerinthegarden

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons. ~Jim Bishop

goldoakleaves

Cold nights finally arrived this week and transformed the trees and shrubs around the garden and through the woods. Green is giving way to gold and bronze and red, filtering the already golden light through a stained glass canopy of warm colors. It is one thing to view the fiery colors from open ground and another entirely different experience to walk beneath them. I feel as if I am in a new world seen through a new lens.

oakleaves

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonize. ~George Eliot

herbtreesfall Everywhere I turn, most of the green beneath my feet and above my head has been changed out to a new color scheme. The morning has been a constant shift between hesitant sunshine and spats of rain and every surface is saturated and rich with color.

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…”
~ Dylan Thomas

(click on any photo in the mosaics to enlarge)

A few flowers continue to bloom, offering rich color and the last bits of food to pollinators.

Rainbow Carpet rose

Echinacea purpurea

Dianthus

Last rose of ‘Abraham Darby’

Rose ‘At Last’

Some of the garden faces are still smiling.

Zelda

Green lady on garden bench

Garden bench and Hydrangea arborescens

Hydrangea arborescens blossom

Angel and I make the rounds several times a day – not only are the colors beautiful but the autumn earth is rich with scents. “At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth.” (Rilke)

The leaves are beginning to fall as the rain begins again; it won’t be long before the trees are bare and this glorious color is a memory. “Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.” (Chad Sugg)
autumngate

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot

Shadow and Light

Posted on October 26, 2012 by composerinthegarden

Chiaroscuro – Italian for the play of shadow and light, most often referring to tonal relationships in visual art (Wikipedia)

Walking through a garden or a forest is a much different experience than looking at it from afar. When seen from a vantage point, no matter how beautiful a view, only your eyes see the beauty before you and you are separated from it – it and you. But walking in it and through it, that is a different experience altogether. You and it become a “we” – fused together by a play of shadow and light, transient shifts of color and tone that enfold you as a part of nature’s spectral ballet.

Chiaroscuro is a term that painters used to describe the use of shadow and light to create the illusion of three dimensionality on a two dimensional plane. Photographers embraced it as a reminder that they were photographing light, not things. As I walked through the garden this week, each step became an experience of shadow and light. Every plant and flower took on a golden glow, filtered through the autumn leaves above. Standing below a fiery maple tree became a transcendent experience of standing in liquid gold; the deep umber and burgundy hues of light traveling through oak leaves captivated me for long moments. The beauty of autumn is transitory, all the more treasured for that short period of time when we look upward at a canopy of color that is unmatched in any other season.

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Here is French singer Juliette Greco singing Les Fuielles Morte (Autumn Leaves) in French in a live concert in Berlin (1967) in a simple arrangement of voice and guitar. Sartre said of her that she had “. . . millions of poems in her voice.” (Wikipedia)

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. ~ Geothe

For a translation of the original French lyrics (by Jacques Prevert) to Les Feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves (not the Johnny Mercer English lyrics) – see this translation by Coby Lubliner.

Second Wind

Posted on October 6, 2012 by composerinthegarden

Second wind – restored energy or strength; renewed ability to continue in an effort ~ The Free Online Dictionary

The rains came last night, the wind blew them in. When I went out at midnight with Angel, the air was still warm, pale clouds were threaded across the sky, and the insect chorus was heartily singing. I fell asleep by an open window, lulled by the unexpected sound of summer in October. But later I woke to the sound of the wind blowing the leaves and bowing the trees for hours, finally bringing a soft steady rain punctuated by acorns plunging from the trees onto the roof. It was a night to wake up often and listen, then fall asleep again with the wild sounds of the earth all around.

The garden lingers into fall, having gotten its second wind after the heat of summer. MIld days, alternating between warm slanted sunshine and entire days of rain and mist, have fostered a last round of bloom. Even as copper oak and golden ash leaves drift into the garden beds, the bright faces of flowers blossom everywhere. The purple asters and golden mums of the season have appeared right on cue, but roses, salvias and coreopsis are making a surprise grand finale appearance, along with the annual nicotiana and ageratum. The deep warm foliage of coleus and ornamental sweet potatoes have refreshed themselves after the scorching heat of August; their vibrant leaves trail and climb through the garden in a final burst of glory. Here and there a summer clematis flower pops up, an unexpected treat. The tall grasses are at their height of flowering, wands swaying in the slightest breeze, moving in tandem with the clouds overhead.

Bio-acoustician Bernie Krause coined the term geophony to describe the sounds of the rain, wind, thunder, surf – the music of the geosphere, as different from biophony, the sounds of the biosphere. Although the raucous arguments of crows and the chirping calls of chipmonks will continue year round, I can hear the shift from the biophony chorus to the predominance of the geophony orchestra. As the northern hemisphere swings into late autumn, the music of wind and weather is gradually taking the place of the creature choir that is the hallmark of spring and summer.

Here are some photos of the fall garden in its second wind. (click on any photo to enlarge it; that will take you into the gallery viewer – if you are on a mobile device, scroll up to see it)