In Spring the garden is an expression of a goddess - draping pink petals like the tulle of a ballgown, sunbeams like halos. Everything has been prepared for the Spring Queen - the beds have been fertilised, the edges of the lawn trimmed, the paths raked. If the chickens are shooed from the back deck, the garden is perfect. The quince tree sings prettily alongside the japanese plum, and even the small birch is unfurling it's leaves in a friendly manner. The umbrellas of elderflowers lace the blue sky and every green leafed vegetable is dancing in the breeze, fat and full.

Flowers are mathematical patterns - whilst in a stiff breeze the apple blossoms drift over the yard, when they first form they are perfectly drawn. Some are hardier, like the artichoke. You could get out a ruler and draw perfect lines between their pointed petals. Inside the fluffy flower, the heart to be pickled. But even the artichoke gives way to chaos - I anticipate the wilting leaves, the death, the cutting back to wait for next season where their huge leaves stand as architectural masterpiece across from the raspberries and rhubarb.

Amongst all this perfection is the promise that untended, the leaves will not be swept, the fruit will rot on the ground and the rabbits will have their way, tunnelling and burrowing to lay young and eat the roots of the trees I love best. It's a chaos that breaks my heart - I will not be there to control it, to force order upon on it.

The cobwebs will gather raindrops and dust as they hammock themselves between the posts in the vegetable garden, the bird baths will reduce to seaweedy slime and then a dark brown crust, the lawn will bury the daffs that come next Spring and will attempt to uselessly nod their yellow heads that spring is coming. The walker's dogs will run through with no one to shout at them. The inner turning branches of the nectarine and plums will lattice over each other with no one to cut them.

And still, I suppose, there is a kind of order in this. It is in our absence that nature truly becomes something. Other than what we feel comfortable with, perhaps, but something none the less.

This response is to the Creative Garden challenge this week but also to the monthly garden journal! I don't have time to write both! I hope someone else writes to the order/chaos prompt - it's a fun one!

With Love,

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