Time Fades Away: Goodbye Gardening Season 2k9

12/06/2009

Time Fades Away: Goodbye Gardening Season 2k9

This morning we woke up to a clear, cold day that (finally!) felt like December.

We had a lot of chores scheduled, but not so many that we couldn't take the time to have bagels and lox (via Zabar's), which as usual were delicious.

Or that we couldn't take a 'lil nap' afterward, because after all it was Sunday.

But finally we got motivated and went to the garden, where I picked up the last of the leaves and Stephen tried to fix the broken vacuum cleaner.

Our neighbor Scott -- who runs a community garden up the street -- came by to adopt a columnar apple tree that we had been wanting to give away.

We also gave him a cherry tree that we had moved from the ground to a pot a few years ago. At one point we had visions of braiding the trunk and training the branches over the windows of the house, but it became clear that this was not the right tree for this treatment, so we were happy to send it to a new home.

After Scott left, I returned to the garden, where I looked up and was pleased to note that almost all of the leaves had fallen from the birch. I was tired of picking up so many leaves! Still, I could not help but admire the stark beauty of the tree branches against the indigo sky. I covered the garden furniture and brought all the terra cotta pots down to the basement.

Though it was mostly asleep, the garden -- I was pleased to note -- was not without 'winter interest,' and I looked forward to the first snow now that we were prepared.

Upstairs, we put in the storm windows as the last of the fading light illuminated the bloom of a Christmas cactus.

On Broadway, someone had wrapped one of the medians in a string of Christmas lights, which I suppose if you used your imagination and squinted really hard might be considered 'festive.'

The same could be said of the sad little artificial Christmas tree in the lobby of our apartment building: if you looked close enough, you could almost see the fading years of a youth that had long since disappeared.

A tugboat headed south on the Hudson through the setting sun. The George Washington Bridge waited patiently for the night, as it has done for tens of thousands of days already.

Posted at 05:53 PM in Expression | Permalink

Comments

mattthew i really enjoyed this post, and your play by play on putting the garden to bed for the season

Posted by: paolo | 12/06/2009 at 09:53 PM

Thanks, Paolo!!!!

Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 12/06/2009 at 10:35 PM

Your pictures have been *on fire* lately...

Posted by: Rottin' in Denmark | 12/07/2009 at 09:17 AM

Thanks Rottin! (Appreciate the G500 reffy, too!)

Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 12/07/2009 at 09:43 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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12/06/2009