Today is a beautiful fall morning in the garden. It’s 42 degrees, the sky is baby blue, and the just risen sun is creating facets of light on the grass. I love how these pieces of light dance around when the wind blows through the trees. I love how the light dances off the falling leaves in their glide down to the ground.
The walnut trees have shed all their leaves and most of the walnuts are on the ground. It makes it dangerous to walk through the yard – catch your foot on one of those babies and it’s like slipping on a banana peel – down to the ground you go! The ones left on the trees make a sound like the barrage of heavy artillery fire when they fall and hit the ground and the tin roof of the house. One of these days I’m going to turn those two trees into a nice table.
Nellie’s Garden had an interesting event recently. Turns out that there is an old well in the center of the Garden, and it caved in. It’s repaired now, but I like the idea that there is a well in the center of the Garden. I like the symbolism of it being even more a place to come for rest, soul nourishment and the enjoyment of silence. A place to ponder time.
The changing of the seasons always causes me to ponder time. My parents taught me to love the seasons, and the differences in them. They taught me how to settle into the different kinds of rest that come with the different seasons. Fall is a “closing up” kind of rest. You put away the things of summer. I took some of the summer chairs and tables off the porches yesterday, rolled up the hoses and put them away, clipped off the basil plants. No more pesto until next summer.
This closing up is also a creative act for me. It creates a space in my soul that yearns less for activity and more for watching the light dance across the yard. This closing up gives time to look into the well of my soul and see what I left there during the activities of summer. You have to be careful around wells. You never know what you might find when you look into them, or who you might meet hanging around them. In the story of the Samaritan woman meeting Jesus at the well (John 4) he told her to “wait no longer and look no further for I am he who is to come…”
Fall in the garden…encounters at wells, light dancing with the falling leaves, “closing up” time to look into the soul. Wait no longer and look no further. What we need to see, hear and learn is already within us, waiting to be drawn up so that it too can dance with the light.
