The joy of melancholy

Driving home on Friday the near-full moon was rising over the Langeberg while the sun was still shining on the peaks making for a magical play of light. The days of arriving in the light at Towerwater are clearly over. We arrive with the house and parking area lit with the warm glow of lamps in the colder evenings.

Evenings at Towerwater are getting colder and the mornings are shrouded in fog. A blanket of fog covers the valley until about midday, creating a magical world of wet spider-webs.  In the garden, crystal droplets capture a whole world in each reflection.

The garden is slowing down and getting ready for a well-deserved sleep. The roses are losing their leaves and there are still new blooms opening. The rosarium is becoming more of a spiritual experience where the lines and forms of the plants are accentuated by the starkness of bare branches. Different coloured blooms are more visible. The individuality of each bloom echoes in a soft accent in the arrangement of the stark lines of the leafless plants.

It is as if Nature is busy with ikebana arrangements in the garden; focusing on the beauty of the other parts of the rosebush, instead of the profusion of blooms. It is as though Nature wants you to look at the parts that are overlooked in the riotous growth of spring and summer. The silence of the morning with its stark monotone fog arrangement emphasises the empty branches of the roses and reminds me of the spiritual aspect of ikebana.

Now is the time to slow down and appreciate the simplicity of the structure of things that supports the joy of summer. Winter teaches us to appreciate differences and the importance of change. In the end there is one structure supporting the joy and melancholy of life and now is the time to see it and appreciate it.

It is time to slow down and appreciate the things unseen in busy seasons. This can be a metaphor for life. Sit down and let Nature teach you.