A Samhain offering
The day dawns grey and wet, the woods opposite flare orange in momentary defiance of leaden skies. A small tornado of leaves whips through the brooding morning towards me. The early light belies the darkening days. It is the last day of October.
It has been grey and damp all week, but I have been gardening in fits and starts, between half term activities fit for a pandemic, between rain showers and sometimes through them as despite - or perhaps because of - the clouds sweeping regularly overhead, it has been mild. Things flower unseasonably; foxgloves make an appearance, pastel pinks out of place in autumn’s fiery palette, the red of the callistemon at least more fitting. As disorientating as the seasonal jet lag from last weekend’s clock change.
Death is everywhere. A tide of leaves covers the garden like the second coming of the pandemic wave. I feel the sadness of each life lost like the leaves fallen in their daily hundreds. Every sweep of my broom to clear our path a prayer. I clear one bed of leaf fall & dying annuals so that I may tend to the perennials. Plants uprooted to more suitable locations, new ones moved into their place, space revealed for next spring’s bulbs. I am ambivalent about autumn tidying, but in this spot it gladdens me. This soil that was claggy clay last winter, baked to cracked unyielding bricks of dust in the dry spring is now soft and dark, delicious to dig. Last autumn’s death, mulched, this summer’s vivid life. Change, though deeply buried and mostly unseen, is happening.
I notice the cyclamen bought for a previous winter display on a different doorstep, hopefully planted out in a bed last winter. Disappointingly, it seemed to die back almost immediately, but here it is, rising again on this day when we mark our dead. So much has died in this last year, not least our old way of life. In my grief still I wonder what may yet rise hopeful in a new form.
Life is everywhere. Mushrooms of all kinds gleam forth from nooks and crannies of the garden, the dark and damp their ideal. We exclaim over them, try to figure out who they are in this brief moment of their blooming, remember their transformative power. The circle is closed, death life's renewal.
Tomorrow is All Soul’s Day in the tradition of my childhood. A day when we would visit the graves of our ancestors, tidy them, bring offerings. The village street sweeper tells me a tale of his ancestor who once lived in our house, who drowned herself in the brook not far away. I read the news of impending lockdown, think of her despair in this moment of our own, tidy leaves from the stream that runs into the brook, make an offering. We carve pumpkins, tell tales of lives past by candlelight, leave sweet offerings by the front door for those who might seek them. We walk in the woods by the light of the full moon, listen to the rising laughter of children meet the curious calls of owls close overhead. Sweet offerings to life.
