A Simple Respect by Barbara Carvallo

The light is changing now.  The mellow heat of High Plains Indian Summer, notwithstanding, the sun is deepening to rich amber in the morning and turning brunt gold at dusk.  The last of the blooms are coming out to show as degree by degree the wind sweeps cooler off the Front Range and down onto the Prairie. 

This is my favorite time of year.  The great Pagan festival of Samhain – Halloween to some – is upon us.  I begin to plan for my dear husband’s Thanksgiving and birthday dinners, acts of love for my partner of over 30 years and our family of choice.  The gardens are settling in for a season’s rest, as am I.  Spring and summer get a little harder from gardening season to gardening season.  Autumn and winter seem to go by faster and faster each year. 

A Witch charged with tending to the beauty of the Earth, I miss the eternal regularity and simple balance of the gardens as they slumber in sterling moonlight and frigid starlight.  There is no arguing with the symmetry of nature, only a fool – and Goddess knows that our species is full of them – tries.  Thus, some children of the spring and summer love shade and some love sun; some love wet and some love dry; some thrive in alkaline soil and some in acid.  To place a shade loving, water needing, acid tolerant plant in the sunny drought of an alkaline landscape is to condemn it to death, plain and simple.  It will not live; no gardener’s skill can save it, nor will any amount of soil amendment, partial shade or indifferent watering.  To know the needs of each plant is to show tolerance for nature’s poise and equilibrium.  We will never create anything as beautiful as the spring flowers and summer blooms.  All of our self importance and money will never change that fact. Knowing this a gardener learns respect.