A Moment of Gratitude

I have started to take it all for granted ... the garden and its bounty. It seems a natural act to wander to the garden gate at the dinner hour and forage for green beans, a perfectly ripe tomato, some fresh basil, and a zucchini to put on the grill. What a privilege to have this bounty a few steps away from my kitchen. When you start finding tomato seeds in your hair, you know you have been a little TOO caught up in harvest management, and it is easy to forget how you waited and waited for that first asparagus spear in the spring, the first handful of green beans you could bring to the table, and oh yes a time when all tomatoes in your garden were in a perpetual state of green.

And yet, in the yin and yang that is so present when you are close to the earth, amid this bounty are the signs of its demise ... the sounds of geese in the sky in the early morning, the shortening of the days, the search for the evening sweatshirt. These harbingers of winter, however faint, seem to carry much more weight than do my little seedlings pushing through the earth in spring.