Dusk Watering

Tonight the Aikens-Hill family is home, in Greece, for the first time in a number of years. In their absence, I am watering Timothy’s garden—his section of plots in the backyard which make up the lower garden.

We’ve had that gentle turn now, the one that comes sometime in late August. Its harbingers are not clear, but when it comes, it is certain, and striking. Maybe it’s that the cicadas and crickets swell loudly and rhythmically. Or perhaps it is the dusky shadow which dulls the brilliant green of midsummer, or the yellowing of garden plants—beans, tomatoes, squash. The days are still hot, and often the nights—but the light falls at a certain golden slant. It’s drier. And just like that, we slip from summer to fall.

So this fall night, I water Timothy’s garden.

It’s a mystery and joy to water someone else’s garden. I can see everywhere Timothy’s care of the plants, and the endless enthusiasm he brings to earth-tending. The beds are full and burgeoning with late-season plants. He lives in hope and in denial about the coming of winter. Off to the side, he is starting new seed, or has potted up inch-high plants, ready to take the place of any diseased and uprooted ones. He’s interplanted tomatoes, basil, sweet potatoes, beans--everything a collage of length, color, and texture. I love the wildness of the late-season garden, and the care and art in this one. My own beds get weedy, and are then purged in a flurry of attention, and go to the wild again, each plant surviving as it can, but these are tended--daily, carefully.

I know Timothy and Christa want a farm, and I hope that dream comes true for them. (Read more about it here, and think about who you know!) I understand that dream as I water. Just like in the old DH Lawrence story, every bed in the garden seems to whisper, “There must be more land. There must be more land.” In his blood, Timothy is a farmer—it’s just that he is waiting for the world to understand that and offer a space.

I believe it will. In many ways, it already has, here. And we are blessed by it.