Despair?

As little as I have posted here, a lot of it has been to complain about some assault or another mounted upon our attempts to raise food or support plants that feed the eyes and nourish the soul.

I think our most recent experience with weather extremes might just take the proverbial cake, however. Reports at least, seem to indicate this sort of thing has not happened for the hundred plus years of keeping weather stats, so that merits some sort of confection, wouldn't you agree?

Day before yesterday, here in Central Texas, we had an afternoon low of 81 degrees. Fairly warm, even for here, for an early December day.

This is Belize in January. It was around 81 there that day. Just like here, only with a gorgeous beach rather than a struggling garden.

The thing that elevates this above the weirdly normal however, is that the same evening, after a cold front blew through, we had sleet and light snow falling.

This is actually here - but not now.  This is from the MLK Weekend Ice Storm 2007.

From tropical warmth to freezing precip all in the course of one twelve hour span.

You tell me how to garden around that, because my imagination fails me.

However, the one thing we all have in common as gardeners, weather vagaries aside, is the need for a sense of humor about it all.

And along those lines, I offer this, from one of my favorite poets.

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry -

flowers wilting on the table,

the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,

the wind moans in the chimney,

and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets

would make of all this,

thee shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,

my thoughts turn to the great

tenth-century celebrators of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things

could hardly be restrained,

and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,

Ye-Hah.

~ Billy Collins ~

(Ballistics)

Poem for a Cold Morning

Our Creeper turns brilliant in December

No Going Back

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

 

~ Wendell Berry ~

Begin - A Poem by Rumi

[Northfield Yellow Day Lily]

BEGIN

This is now. Now is,

all there is. Don't wait for Then;

strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,

feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance

the way branches

of jasmine and cypress

dance in a spring wind.

The green earth

is your cloth;

tailor your robe

with dignity and grace.

~ Rumi ~