Just before the bloom

“The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate when things are fallow and when they are not.” ~Jamaica Kincaid

Longtime “Life Lines” readers will remember “Apollo” from previous posts. In those photos, he was sporting a wild headdress of colorful annuals or spiky succulents, depending on how I dressed him at the time. Apollo has been featured in several garden magazines and newspaper articles over the years, always enjoying his moments in the sun.

Earlier this week, I took this photo of Apollo without his blooming chapeau. I was struck by the barren beauty of the surrounding April landscape — a landscape that’s still waiting for perennials to emerge again from the soil. And I remembered how hard it can be to endure long wintery periods of fallow time, when our own creative drive seems dormant. Sometimes our next stage of growth, our newest work, is transpiring quietly beneath the surface.

As today’s quote reminds me, our gardens teach lessons of trust and patience. Everything will bloom again, in its own time. ~CL