In Autumn's Quieter Embrace

There is a kind of weariness settling in.  Vines that only weeks ago swelled full and green and thickly lush, taunting the trellises with fruited weight, now lean on the same frames with a bleached spindliness; largely spent and languishing.  There are still ripenings in process -- scattered tomatoes of various kinds, peppers at both ends of the Scoville scale, and braising greens.  I planted a fall crop of carrots that are still in their toddler phase, along with some radishes and turnips.  There are cabbages in various stages of growth about which I need to learn when to harvest, and the plums are still softening on the tree.  

But the squash has exhausted itself and all but disappeared; the cucumbers are similarly threadbare.  Okra spears are still coming on, but fewer and fewer; and churned soil is all that marks the place where potatoes and carrots once hid. I gathered this morning the last of the apples that surprised us earlier in the summer, along with a dozen or so tomatoes and a like number of peppers, plus a bundle of collard greens; and I dug up the remainder of the mature carrots.  All that excepted, we are slowing down.

Myself included.  That, blessedly, is the rhythm of things -- imagination, applied physicality, frenzied activity, vigilant attention, gathered reward, and finally rest.  If that sounds rather like the life-cycle in miniature, it should.  Perhaps the garden's accelerated spin on that wheel, in addition to feeding us along the way, is meant to teach us larger lessons about living and aging eagerly and productively and well, and then slowing gracefully until we finally settle in altogether. 

Or maybe fatigue and mortality are simply harder to differentiate in the cooling, wearied days of autumn after a well-spent summer. 

I'll chew on that as I gnaw on one of those carrots newly dug and washed and reclining in the kitchen drain tray.