Another deep dip last night. The temperature apparently reached 31° making this the third significant challenge to homegrown edibles. Most succumbed. Not all. Now I offer you a meadow meditation after frost. On withering vegetables destined for compost. On those hardier crops that endure a little longer. And on this season of transformation.
Only thing left in garden is kale, carrots, and beets at this point. Maybe a few scallions. I actually have had some carrots, chard and leeks in the past week or so. Look at these monsters!
Gigantic leeks, perfect for potato leek soup.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First join in Rosslyn’s backland for a contemplative sit-down.
Meadow Meditation
This image (as well as the frost damaged produce below) dates to October 28, 2010. Yesterday minus fourteen years. Another frost. Another season turning, food-to-compost milestone.
Thresholds look different when considered during a wander through Rosslyn’s woods or a meadow meditation in an Adirondack chair. Grouse drumming in the brush, a hawk circling overhead, the distant ferry arriving then departing.
These are the moments when we recognize and embrace the art of flux.
What is this art of flux? A receptivity to, and even courtship of, mindset shifts, allowing for meaningful change by experimenting whimsically. “What if?!” I think it’s a matter of tapping into our inner child, cultivating our innate curiosity, challenging and questioning conventions, sometimes breaking free from those conventions, flexing and stretching our potential in the interstices. Pro protean places. Overcoming obstacles in new ways, evolving habits, iterating, and innovating. Creating questions that discomfit confidence in existing answers, de-angsting uncertainty. Familiarizing myself with the sorts of growing pains that reassure me that I am moving forward despite the inevitable second guessing and uncertainty of growth.
Transitions. Flux. Liminality. Interstices. Inflection. Evolving.
To remain nimble amidst unpredictability and unforeseen challenges, optimistic astride setbacks and failures, innovative and creative under duress. And to navigate gratefully and passionately at all times.(Source: Transitions)
The art of flux demands humble gratitude, and grateful humility. A lesson often relearned. And passionate pursuit of learning. Living. Growing. Becoming. (Source: The Art of Flux)
This autumn is especially crisp and focused, as if wearing new glasses with a new prescription, freshly fogged and wiped clean. Everything’s a little bit more clear, exaggerated, poignant. I’m aware and receptive.
So the bittersweet bite of autumn’s wintery prequel resonates long after the sun awakens and temperatures rise.
After Frost
Although kale and root vegetables have fared well enough for now, the artichokes — though appearing rugged, armored with spines and scales — are no match for hoar frost.
Note the unusual line-tinged color of artichoke. Damaged by the cold. It will soon be soft and rubbery.
Summer squash are ill equipped when temperatures pledge. No longer edible. But brilliant. Beautiful. Not unlike the curiously colored artichoke, the first flash of color as produce announces frost damage can be arrestingly attractive.
Each of these snapshots captures the beginning of the end. Unless you consider the fact that the frozen food will become compost. Will enrich next spring’s garden. Will ensure a robust harvest next summer.
Flux. And meadow meditations…
What do you think?