
“They aren’t going to come back” I had been thinking, almost reconciled to the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) being lost to the underworld. After all I have failed with tulips in this garden: one season is all they ever gave.

But, suddenly out of empty earth, there they are. Delicate purple petals opening to the sun, reaching out with crimson stamen and styles which I will harvest, three tiny threads from each flower, for precious saffron spice. Tiny green spears heralding heroic return.

Happiness is longing for repetition… **

Painted ladies (Vanessa cardui) dance an ovation on the zinnias.

The garden is staging a grand show. I thought I loved it in spring. Autumn might just be stealing the limelight this year.
The monomyth plays out in the garden, heroic journeys happen every day, every season. As spectator I delight. Even as I dabble in stage management and a modicum of direction, it’s mostly not up to me. I’m only a bit player in this garden drama. Offering up control, submitting to the bigger forces at play is possibly one of the things I find most magnificent and meaningful about making a garden, this thing to do with a wild and precious life.
Gardening, for me, offers potential for the Diné (Navajo) concept of wellness hozho often roughly translated as walking in beauty: living a gracious life of right action connected to place, seasons and time.
Program notes aka recommended reading - oldies but all really worth revisiting for perspective and distraction both
*Ursula Leguin. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia 1974
“To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.”
**Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness Of Being 1984
“And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.”
Joseph Campbell The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 1949
And this article on hozho
Living in Health, Harmony, and Beauty: The Diné (Navajo) Hózhó Wellness Philosophy by Michelle Kahn-John (Diné).
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