The chair

In autumn

There are outdoor garden chairs are handmade and worn. They reside in our mismatched orchard which is made up of a few trees.   The apple and the pear that live here are enough for us to call it an orchard. An olive tree lives here as well. Gravity has the trunk leaning on an angle that annoys me when I look out the kitchen window towards the bottom of the garden.   I want it to stand straight.   I’ve planted many daffodils here and in the spring it is a space of hopeful promise as the season unfolds. Summer, we take refuge here as the garden does not have a lot of shade. Last summer, a summer that was warm, perhaps too warm, I spent many days here with my basket of books reading. The basket handle eventually collapsed and the books were placed elsewhere. Summer moments scattered. This summer I hardly visited this space at all. The chairs remained empty. Why, I am not sure. Autumns is here and for some reason this corner of the garden is where I want to be. The chairs are calling to me to come and sit and this is what I did on a warm autumn Sunday afternoon.

One chair sits on an angle. I put it there as a barrier to stop the dogs from snooping amongst things I don’t want them snooping in. This is where I am sitting. On one side of my chair is an arrangement of pots filled with plants I have brought and have not yet planted in the garden. There is a collection of salvias and chrysanthemums.  Cuttings of geraniums fill other pots alongside the echinacea I have dug up so I can keep tracking of them over the winter, they always seem to disappear then. Hellebore seedlings and alliums bulbs mingle. The zinnias that I grew for the first time like it here as does the $5 Dahlia that is the perfect colour combo of raspberry and cream swirl. It flowers a lot for something left neglected in the sale bin.  These pots have grown into a flower bed of sorts. I think it is a wonderful way to plan a new flower bed if you are not sure how it will sit in your garden. It seems an easier way to edit as you can simply move and  rearrange pots rather than repeated digging and moving that I seem to do.

To my left is a bee hive. A small starter hive which hopefully over the winter will find my garden a safe place to grow and build up strong and ready for the spring. As I sit bees flow out from the hive at a pace that seems to reflect the mood of a Sunday. They are as lazy as the sun is. Working but only just. One comes and sits on my hand. It all feels very gentle and kind. Nestled under the apple tree the light is enough to keep the hive warm and  yet it is protected from the elements. It would go completely unnoticed if it was not for the bright blue paint that covers the hive. The sound of bee causally flying past is comforting.

My eyes settle on a new bed that I made this year. The bottom of the garden here is very much the bottom of the garden, often becoming a soggy mess over the winter so I decided to create a bed here in an attempt to provide both interest and reduce the mess. It has worked better than I thought becoming an inviting part of the garden that seems happy to sort itself out. I planted some ferns from other corners of the garden, foxgloves seedlings that I had too many of. Hellebores look happy as to do the anemones and the masterwort is thriving. I have created unintentionally a bed of white and green, a combo that I love. The white of the flowers add much needed light to this often dark corner of the garden. I added a small path and some terracotta pots for contrast to the green and white and while it will need a tidy up in the coming months it has become one of my favourite parts of the garden.

So I sit here for an hour or so while the light is inviting. I take photos. Play with the film function (see above, sound is off). As I walk around this patch of the garden I watch the bees that are foraging and see what is catching their attention. Cosmos which are still flowering are inviting as too are asters (note to self I need more asters). The dahlias too are gaining attention. I deadhead the dahlias to keep them all going a bit longer. Birds flout about. The bees hum. I hear an Airedale snuffling about. For a while it all feels still and wonderful and I feel very happy to discover the simple pleasure of sitting in the chair in the garden in Autumn.