Lucy, Grasshoppers and Fennel

Saturday I had a couple of hours on a glorious fall day to do some quick work in my garden.  Out I went to pull out the old vegetables plants in an area that should have had leeks, fennel and lettuce growing and flourishing but which had become overgrown.   SO overgrown, in fact that to my amazement, the cosmos from last hear had sprouted and were growing, probably too late to bloom though.  I was pulling weeds, fast and furiously.  They were sliding out of the recently moistened dirt like I was pulling them out of butter.  Weed pulling does not get much better.  Out came the decapitated broccoli and cabbage, the pepper plants that had a few premature babies, and moribund tomatoes.  Bending, straining and pulling at the weeds and filling the garbage bin, all of a sudden I got to those baby cosmos plants and to my great joy, rather than cosmos, there was the fennel I had planted in June.  The fragrance of anise rose to my nostrils.   Those Leeks, Lettuce and Fennel seeds were sown with great hope of continuing the flavor of my most recent trip to France.  I had lamented to more than one person that none of the seeds I had sown on my return, had “come up”.  Yet here right in front of me, sending their phermones wafting up to my olfactory organ were the winsome lacy fennel plants that I had desired.  Not ready to be enjoyed and maybe destined to go back to the earth intact in their pristine growth.  I delighted in them, breathed them in, and cleared out around them, hoping that they might still grow into a plant that I can enjoy before winter sets in.

Eventually I had to move on and as I continued I discovered a had a partner in my work, no help really, just a casual observer. A lovely olive green guy I quickly and not very creatively named Jiminy.  He was climbing around on the fence  and I took a gratifying few minutes to observe him climbing around on the foliage and wooden fence when al of a sudden I was inspired to fetch my camera and record these moments , Jiminy and the fennel.  He was hard to capture on film, swinging from tiny branch to branch, climbing on all aspects of the fence.  The fennel was a much easier proposition, as I posed beautifully for me there mounted in the dirt, waiting for me to discover it. 

Now that I had my camera in hand I decided it time for a Fall shot of Lucy.  She is not as enraptured by my imprinting her image on film as I.  She did, however, pose nicely for me on the deck rail so that we could have the backdrop of the cambient dogwood tree.  I could tell that she felt that it was a rather risky proposition as she did a good job of posing for me.  Good thing, as not posing would have resulted in a long drop for her.   (Seriously, I was right there with a hand out!)   I captured her feelings so well, a shot of her being coy, gazing off into the distance, a profile and one being, well simply, done. 

Lucy, Grasshoppers and Fennel, yes they all add joy to the simple act of gardening in the cambient season of Fall. Cambient, what is that you ask?  Well, dear readers, it is a word that I think we should all add to our vocabulary, simply  put it means changing and comes from Spanish.