I recently read, and re-read, the chapter "Earthman vs. the Seasons--Autumn," especially the section titled "Reflections on the Cycle of Life." I read and re-read it because Mitchell so easily expressed my exact feelings about gardening with statements like these:

"It soon becomes clear to the gardener, who has probably started out to achieve a certain bloom, that the cycle of life in the plant is a good bit more enjoyable than the bloom itself."

"It is the spectrum, not the color, that makes colors worth having, and it is the cycle, not the instant, that makes the day worth living."

I touched on my own love of the cycle of life on an earlier post, in which I examined my love of flower buds. It's true that when you start gardening, and for people who are never really gardeners but are responsible for a yard, that you think that the bloom, or the fruit, or the vegetable is the whole point of gardening; that you won't be able to truly enjoy the garden until that rose is in bloom or you have harvested your first ripe tomato. And while those things are great, they are nothing to me compared to the rest of it--the seed starting, the planting, the pruning, the watching---in short, the care and love of plants. And you might even think that the bloom or the fruit is the culmination of all of that care, but it isn't, not really. Because the plant goes on after the bloom, either to stand through the winter, or to set seed and die back--and these things are just as beautiful to me as the plant in full bloom. This is coming from someone who has confessed herself to be a flower addict, and that is still true. As I look out my window right now, I see that the zinnias have just about had it for the year. I'll leave them standing until the finches have eaten all of the seeds off. The viburnums are just ending their brilliant fall display, and are starting to drop their leaves. My yard is a sea of maple leaves. I feel just as happy walking out my door at this time of year as I do at the height of bloom time in May. That is the joy of being a gardener.

I'll leave you with one more great quote from Mitchell:

"In the garden, there is always life, right through the year, and gardeners are merely those people who, while admiring the sex of plants as much as or more than anybody else, go on even beyond, and admire as well the bones and skin and guts and all the rest of it, and who admire more than anything the totality of it in all seasons. Compared to gardeners, I think it's generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence."

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