The Restorer's Journal
Field notes on art, gardens, wildlife, books, and cultivating a more beautiful future.
Give the Mess a Chance
’Tis the season when people talk about cleaning up their gardens. Cutting everything back, clearing the beds, and removing the "mess."
I try to resist that urge no matter how messy things look. The seed heads stay, the dead stems can stay, the dried flowers and fallen leaves stay. What looks untidy to us looks like home to someone else. I look out into the garden this time of year and I don't see plants that are finished.
I see habitat. Places where bees may be sheltering. Seeds feeding birds.
I see next year's garden already beginning.
The restoration of my city plot has taught me that beauty doesn't disappear when the flowers fade.
It simply transforms. Providing habitat is beautiful.
Apache Plume
I stop every time I pass a stand of Apache plume.
In spring, I admire its flowers and delicate greenery.
In autumn, I fall in love with it all over again for its feathery seed heads that glow like little wisps of rose-gold silk, catching the afternoon sun and seeming almost illuminated from within.
Whenever I paint plants, people often assume I'm drawn to them because they're beautiful.
And of course that's true.
But what fascinates me most is what beauty is doing.
Those feathery seed heads aren't just ornamental. They're purposeful.
They're carrying the future.
The plant has spent an entire growing season gathering sunlight, drawing water from the soil, feeding pollinators, and building energy. Now everything it has gathered is being packed into tiny seeds and entrusted to the wind.
Seasonal Companions
October might be my favorite month in New Mexico.The mornings are crisp, the sky a shocking blue filled with colorful hot air balloons.
And the garden is no longer shouting for attention. That bright urgency of spring and summer has softened into something quieter. The hummingbirds have mostly moved on. Morning light slips through the windows of my studio at a different angle, catching my current project spread out across my desk. Mornings are crisp and cool.
This time of year feels contemplative to me.
I find myself returning to the same question:
What do we carry forward?