Friday, 8 October 2010
Chanticleer, An Aubade
The sign says closed but the gates are half open. Today we fortunate members of Garden Writers Region II can enter early. I left home in the dark at 6:11 a.m. with a line of fiery light on the horizon. Arrived at 7:38 a.m. with a few people here before me.
Greetings, a cup of coffee, and I'm rushing over dew wet grass down to the pond. My hope is that the air is cool enough, the water sufficiently warm that there will be mist rising from its surface.
The sun is rising. Light is in the sky but not yet the sun's orb.
It angles sharply between the trees, penciling narrow bars of light and broad sweeps of shadow across the lawn
and becomes caught in the the delicate leaves of a Japanese maple, illuminated like a stained glass window.
I reach the pond and find that the mist, if there was any, has melted away. Fish rise in morning,
kiss the water's surface and turn reflections of lotus leaves into a band of rippled abstractions.
The water stills and returns to its mirrored self. Am I up, am I down? Reflection.
Moonstone drops of dew on alchemilla. Each jagged point on the leaf's edge creates a diadem. Not dew
but something brought up from roots, water of guttation exuded from tiny pores and something seen
early in the day. Thus, a transient moment in one's own garden or - today, a morning treat at Chanticleer.
The sun is rising. Open areas become flooded with light. The patterning
of this path seem to fade away, as if stones were mist that melts & vanishes.
Another path steps off through moss into a jungle of ferns. Perhaps
small dinosaurs were lurking here before sunrise, now just imaginary.
Two brilliant red dahlias lend ember dark and fiery petals to the day.
A brobdingnabian leaf, a humongous leaf, in the teacup garden. For sure it's a Colocasia
and in my perusal the plant list I figure it has to be either 'Jack's Giant' or 'Thailand Giant'.
In either case it is for sure aptly named. Much grander than a mere umbrella on a rainy day.
A couple of watering cans plunked down in a corner, readily to hand for the needs of thirsty plants.
When visiting last May I saw this dying beech. Painting it with copper
was not enough to cure its ills. Even long lived beech trees do not last forever.
It was cut down. I hope some found its way to Chanticleer's woodworking shop, thence to reemerge
in ornamental guise. Meanwhile these substantial sections offer us a choice: a Jens Jensen council ring,
a place to meet for contemplation or story telling, or a woodhenge for contemplations of a more mystical nature.
All is not over, not finished. The wood will rot away but the tree lives on. As beech trees will, a branch
swept down and touched the earth, sent roots into the soil and thus the tree has cloned itself to grow anew.
Many decades hence there will be another stately beech, turning mystical circle down through the years.
.
Poetry written in earth with turning of the seasons and the growth of plants, metered with trowel and hoe.
Poetry, for the morning and the rising of the sun, an aubade.