A day of autumn gardening
Yesterday I decided to take a day off work and drive to my paradise to take care of the garden before winter hits, to weed the flower beds, do all the pruning of the jasmine tree, the bougainvilleas, the laurels, the rose trees, the ivy and the plumbagos. So, just after the early morning school runs, I jumped into my jeans, into the car, carrying along a travel mug full of hot coffee and took my way to our country cottage. The weather was not promising, but this could by no means spoil my plans; a day off work has to be a day off work, even if wet.
It has been quite some time since I’ve last been there and once I stepped my foot through our garden gate, the picture of autumnal blues stroke me. The place where we use to lay our summer easyliving, leave beach towels and swimming suits hanging from the chairs to dry under the sun, the yard where we drink cold coffees for hours on a row and white wine in the warm evenings has been transformed to a scenery of some melancholic French movie
I often call myself a child of spring, an eternal lover of every single moment of spring revival; it’s maybe because I was born on a March of past years, it’s on every spring that I feel newly born again. I love summer as well, the cruel Greek sun sweeping away everything subtle, the quiver of the first swim, the breaths we take once the temperature drops a bit in the evenings. Autumn and winter are not really my piece of cake; I like and enjoy scattered moments of both those seasons, the organizational fever of early September and the cool nights before Christmas, the warm pullovers and the boots, the chestnuts and the mushroom soups…but that’s it.
Well, it is what it is, I should consider myself lucky for living in a country where spring and summer sit in for more than eight months every year. So, determined to get the most out of my nine to five free hours, I grabbed my pruning scissors and my weeder and started attacking all the green invaders that threatened my beautiful plants and flowers. The place was soon transformed into a mess, with uprooted weeds and branches cut out from the evening primroses lying all around.
As I was kneeling in front of a bunch of a purple leaved plant (we call it telegraph in Greek, I don’t know the English name), cutting and cutting and cleaning, I had an unexpected cute encounter… a huge frog was sleeping below the big leaves. He was so laid back and relaxed and I felt bad for disturbing his peace, so I just took a couple of bad photos, non centered and a bit blurry. I left this part of weeding for next time; after all, a good frog sleep has to remain intact 🙂
Five hours later, with my hands scratched and bleeding, as I always refuse to put on garden gloves, the work was done, the yard was clean, the garden was perfect and then… a storm came. Feeling grateful that the rain has waited for me to finish, I moved inside the house to put fresh sheets on the beds, so that we find them ready when we all come back some weekend, I packed the summer duvets and replaced them by warm winter blankets,
I locked up the front door and started my drive back to the big city. I took the sea road, the sea was turbulent, the colors were magical, the air was thick like honey (as the song says) and autumn didn’t seem so bad after all.