In the Classroom of the Fallow Field

One could say that it was an odd time to take up gardening full-time -- autumn, when everything is winding down in anticipation of winter.  To be sure, there have been projects to complete -- a greenhouse to build, fruit trees to plant, a garden plot to demarcate -- but there is precious little "gardening" to do.  Yes, I have established some greens and herbs in the greenhouse, and they require daily tending -- watering, examining, offering some encouraging words -- but those essential demands consume precious little time.  The tools are stowed, the water barrels are emptied and stored, the hoses are wound and deposited in the shed. 

Horticulturally speaking, it is the slow time.  The land is quieting, and there is little for this entering farmer to do but walk around, noticing the grasses, peering through the brush opened by now-naked branches to see what only weeks ago was obscured.  The trees look different, stripped of their imposing wardrobe -- vulnerable in a way that is true of any living thing.  The grasses, so recently tall and undulating in the wind like a dry land ocean, now prone as if hibernating for the winter -- which, I suppose, is precisely true.  The lawn that seemed hopelessly carpeted by fallen walnuts and hedge apples has largely been cleared by the squirrels -- or whatever.  Brittle branches, broken by wind and the weight of an early snow last month, litter the pathways and call for attention.

I can only imagine what is happening beneath the surface.  Do the worms and microbes press deeper as the  soil hardens with the freezing?  Do the roots essentially take a deep breath and hold it for the next four months?  Those details are out of my reach.  I am confined to monitoring what happens in plainer view -- the deer venturing out into the open field for food -- the herd of does and the couple of adolescent fawns, and only occasionally the more reticent buck; the rabbits, hidden in the grass in plain sight, jumping away from the step of my foot; the occasional cardinal on a branch.

There is little to do but walk around...and pay attention.  But surely that is important -- essential and even reverential -- work; seeing, watching, hearing, noticing.  This is the time to get acquainted, intimately, with this place that has already become, in an anticipatory way, my teacher; and I dare not neglect my studies. 
This, in other words, is my book work in this quietly encompassing classroom of the fallow field.