Thursday, October 11, 2007

Putting the Garden to Rest

The vegetable beds covered with straw.

Dean and I drove out to Woodinville last Saturday, for our yearly straw bale purchase. The gardens beds look so cozy & tucked-in and ready for winter now. It's time to get out the winter duvet for the bedroom as well. It all makes me feel like I want to hibernate for a few months. Wake me up in March or April?

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Putting the Garden To Rest

Today you clipped long, thin verticals
from the espaliered pear and apple, laid them straight
in three bundles tied with twine.

I dug the vegetable beds under,
turning the heavy soil until it fell black
and loose from the spading fork.

I love this emptiness.
Bare branches making a net for the wind.
The garden tucked under a cover of straw.

We pull dry logs from the woodpile,
carry them in to the stove.
A finch lights on the fencepost,

then disappears into the white sky.


--from Saying the World

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4 comments:

Montgomery Maxton said...

how funny would it be if you stagged a photo of a bunch of people wearing black standing around it!

Peter said...

MM: hehehe
Or Dean as the Grim Reaper with a hood and scythe.

ABIGAIL HARKSON said...

Gorgeous poem. Your blog is keeping me from my desk job... :)

I just saw an interesting article in the Oregonian featuring a local Portland restaurant that keeps an edible rooftop garden--using all their fresh vegetables (grown from the rooftop) in the restaurant's menu. The vegetables are grown in rows of kiddie pools set directly in the sunlight of Portland's skyline. Edible skylines...I only wish I was more of a gardener.

Peter said...

Thank you, Abigail.
And welcome to the Virtual World.
pp