The Burning of the Leaves

Monday June 11, 2001

Along the margins of the old garden, inhabiting the remnants of the overgrown wilderness, there survive a precious few reminders of the haphazard plantings of past gardeners in residence.

Most of them are at ground level, out of my reach unless I get my kneeler out and even then too low for me to get my eyes and my camera down to their level. So I wander along, appreciating. Here and there, though, more vigorous plants lift themselves and their flowers up to where I can get at them. And then, out comes the camera and I work for as long as it takes to record the beauty.

There’s something very special about finding beautiful flowers in a wilderness, even if that wilderness is only twelve inches deep, backed by a wire fence and constrained by a concrete path.

It would be so easy to miss them. And even easier to forget them.

	Yellow rose

Today I managed to get a good shot of a yellow rose, growing in the strip by the side of the front drive. It takes a bit of doing, taking photographs of a flower outdoors where it’s growing. The least bit of wind moves the stems so, even if you use a tripod, you need to wait for the precise moment when the bloom is still. The background is almost never really suitable. And the light needs to be just so to bring out the beauty. There are far more failures than successes, and it’s not a job for a hasty man. Me I’m happy at it, and I’m slowly building an album collection, one or two flowers at a time. Immensely satisfying.

	…the garage doors get a coat of primer

Not all activity around the old ranch house was so peaceful and leisurely, though. Taking a break from applying the paint to the shingles — a very smelly and unpleasant job — Graham has been sanding down the woodwork and applying a coat of primer. It was the perfect day for it, not too hot, nor too cold, and with a pleasant breeze that made the air light and wholesome.

Until Mrs Pile-it-up-and-burn-it set a match to her annual garden bonfire and proceeded to do her bit for global pollution. All afternoon and on into the evening.

I’ve ranted about this filthy practice each year we’ve been here — another of those cycles I was waffling on about yesterday, I suppose, though not a pleasing one. Today I did nothing more than shut all the windows tight and sit indoors doing my best to think beautiful thoughts.

You’d think I’d be good at beautiful thoughts after so many years of practice. I do try, honest I do, and I do achieve a degree of success. But, really, I’m more inclined to seethe and shout than to sit quietly and think of England.

Or, more precisely, Wales. The house in Wales will not have close neighbours.

And I’ve said that before, too. All part of them pesky cycles…

Harry Cat stayed indoors with me but Dolly the Mega-cat had to prove something or other about a cat’s catio being a cat’s castle, and she stood out there, grey, stolid and statuesque, defying the smoke as it wafted round the corner. Later in the evening I tapped the table to signal grooming time and she jumped up to be brushed.

“Oh, Dolly, you stink of smoke!”

I’d expected her to protest but perhaps I didn’t put enough or the right kind of scorn into my voice because she stretched out, luxuriously, and proceeded to purr.

I wonder if learning to purr might help with the pursuit of beautiful thoughts?

 

* * * * *

 

Today’s poem came from my attempt to think beautiful thoughts while bonfire smoke kept me shut indoors. I remembered a poem by Laurence Binyon I’d enjoyed greatly when I was young. Today I was much taken with it again, not least because I find it has a subtlety that I missed all those years ago. The young man delights in the savagery of the flames, dancing round the bonfire; when you get older, having seen many more fires, they take on an extra layer of meaning, rather softer and inclining to the introspective:

 

The Burning of the Leaves   Now is the time for the burning of the leaves, They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke Wandering slowly into the weeping mist. Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. The last hollyhock´s fallen tower is dust: All the spices of June are a bitter reek, All the extravagant riches spent and mean. All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost. Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare, Time for the burning of days ended and done, Idle solace of things that have gone before, Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there: Let them go to the fire with never a look behind. That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more. They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour, And magical scents to a wondering memory bring; The same glory, to shine upon different eyes. Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours. Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.   Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

 

‘They will come again, the leaf and the flower,…/…The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.’ Yes. That’s a strangely comforting thought. Beautiful, even.