Piedmont Gardener

Late-blooming Cosmos and friend

This has been quite a crazy year. World economies teeter, revolutions abound. Change is palpable, perhaps more so than usual for many of us.

When the “real world” grows too nonsensical/ugly for me to watch, I turn to my haven against all madness: my garden. Here my world always makes sense. That doesn’t mean the natural world doesn’t occasionally seem cruel. Sometimes it does. But the dances between predator and prey, flood and drought, heat wave and ice storm — they possess a rhythm born of millennia. The constancy of those changes comforts me.

Iris ‘Batik’

Even amidst Nature’s harshest cruelties, beauty can be found — insects immortalized in amber, the greening of scarred land after a forest fire. Breath-taking beauty often manifests in Nature for no obvious reason. Does a flower really need to be so exquisitely colored to draw pollinators? Is it merely a happy accident that the same perfume that beckons bees to flowers also intoxicates the noses of humans?

Ashe Magnolia flower opening

I like to think beauty is part of The Plan. It stops us in our tracks, shakes us from our ruts, reawakens us to our place on this blue-green planet we all share. With that thought in mind, today I am sharing a few of the magnificent photos that Wonder Spouse has taken of our yard over recent years. Readers of this blog will recognize some of the plants. Some I’ve yet to write about.

I believe that beauty is infinite in Nature. It’s all a matter of tuning your eyeballs to see what’s smack in front of you. As we Americans count our blessings tomorrow, I hope you’ll remember to put the abundance and beauty of the natural world near the top of your list.

Bees working sunflowers

Happy Thanksgiving to all.