At Summer’s End

A year ago none of this was here.

Not the bench zones, not the greenhouse, not the stone wall garden. Just a few trees and no real idea what any of it would become.

The gardens you don’t see much of in this one — my wife’s — have been here for decades, built by her hand, one bed and one transplant at a time, day after day, season after season, long before I had a bench at all. I didn’t start growing anything until I started paying very close attention to what she’d already made. (She’s a gardening savant).

When I watch it back, the year looks slow. It wasn’t. You’re just out there every day with the hose and the wire and the clippers, not noticing, and then one September you turn the camera around and there’s a place instead of a plan.

And now: winter is coming.