A Garden for Pablo: September 2017

Monday, 25 September 2017

the perfect September

All the months are crude experiments out of which
the perfect September is made.
Virginia Woolf A Passionate Apprentice

September border

If August is 'a wicked month' (Edna O'Brien) then September is the 'morning after the night before month'. Borders are flushed with the tell-tale signs of over indulgence, leading inevitably to feeling a bit seedy!

Rudbeckias and Japanese anemones

The glorious perennials are, like many of us, past their best but determined to have a final flowery fling before accepting that the autumn of their days will unrelentingly make way for a steady decline into the somnambulism of winter.

cosmos purissima

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Garden Lore

Who will take care of this garden, who will nurture it?

I will, said January.

I will anchor it to the earth with snowdrops.

I will give it my stone, the garnet.

It is mine, said February.

I will feed it the memory of all that grows.

I will welcome it with amethyst and primrose.

I will coax it with bloodstone and daffodil, said March.

Like a boxer battered by winter

I will lift myself from the frosty canvas of the earth to welcome it.

With diamond and daisy I will seduce it.

I will soak it in shower after shower, said April.

In the yawny earth its seeds will riot.

I will make it dizzy with emeralds

And the fumes of the hawthorn, said May.

It will know of nothing but play.

And I will adorn it with a necklace

Of honeysuckle and ruby, said June.

It will dance to my languid tune.

I will contain it, said July.

I will handcuff it with briar and chrysolite,

Drug it with the scent of roses.

August spoke from the garden’s stillness.

I will weep layer upon layer of sardonyx.

I will teach it the brevity of poppies.

When its bones begin to creak

I will cure it with aster and opal,

promised September.

I will guide it towards sleep with the cold light of sapphires;

For its lullaby I will provide the swan song of dahlias,

said October.

Under the weight of dead chrysanthemums I will bury it,

said November. I will give it a headstone of topaz,

a rosary of berries.

And I will guard its sleep, said December.

On a pillow of moonstone

It will dream of holly and the coming snowdrop.

Brian Patten