But I am NOT done with apple picking

For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

Excerpt from Apple Picking by Robert Frost.

Some stuff does stick in your brain.

The red balls (aka apples) in the orchard on my road reminded me of the Robert Frost poem, After Picking Apples.

This poem, like all good poems, is a metaphor for something else entirely. And something else forced me to concentrate on what those strawberry-colored bombs signified in my landscape of bronze, gray and amethyst.

After cutting back and raking the garden, I began my list of what I needed to move, to buy, to remove and to coddle. Most importantly, I paused and thought about what I want my garden to be. Part of that wanting is an ideal that can never be realized.

Disappointment is often what I feel at the end of the year. Next comes ambition and desire. I garden, to garden another day. There is always another cultivar, perhaps an entirely different plant, certainly better compost or more of it and definitely new ideas. Seeing is integral to gardening and the orchard on my road invites me to look again and imagine a more perfect garden, perhaps in 2010 or 2011.