My niece in our autumnal garden once we were able to extend our bubbles during the first lockdown, 2020.

It wasn’t until we inched out of our first nationwide lockdown last year that I realised, while homebound, that I had witnessed nearly an entire single season occur in my backyard.

During this time, photo-taking became my welcome distraction to relieve the initial anxiety, secondary procrastination and general halting of normal daily routine. And the process of wandering with my camera, and frankly, quite indulgently documenting my garden each day main-lined me into the slow, but steady shift of autumn.

For the first time, I noticed every change. We began with the very balmy first-half of level 4 in March, involving beanbag reading in the sunshine, then graduated to jackets and hats for walks around the block by late April and May. The lack of busy life-stuff made room to notice the work Mother Nature was getting up to as per usual.

I appreciated my determined cosmos and lupins refusing to give up and my dahlias eventually throwing their last blooms, before they began their ragged meltdown ready for winter dormancy.

We gathered up our autumn raspberries and I even relished the clean-up and “putting to bed” of the messy flower beds. We couldn’t help but notice the change in light, bringing a magical warm haze to the air with each still sunset. The intense crescendo of autumn colour of our little Japanese maple was impossible to ignore. So impressive it caused us to move its wine barrel pot to a position that we could easily see it from the living room. Its last show happening with flaming vigour over a week before dramatically dropping all its leaves in just days.
This was off-set by the slower, staggered turning of our plum, cherry and garden maple, dropping blankets of golden leaves which we sucked through a leaf blower, spreading their chopped-up remnants on the garden beds as a winter mulch.

The flaming seasons end to the Japanese maple as it does every autumn.

My experiments in gardening have reconnected me to all the lovely signals we get that the next season is on the way, but as a non-gardener, I feel that autumn provides the easiest opportunity to plug into the ebb and flow of nature.

You don’t need your own garden to find the comfort in the reassuring march forward that the seasons offer. Adopting a tree, a neighbour’s front garden or local park that you can easily note while going about your daily business might just provide you with a steadying touch point. A signal that, despite what is going on in your world right now, there are unstoppable forces which move on despite it all, carrying you with them.

From my office window at home in suburban Christchurch, I have a front-and-centre view of my neighbour’s ancient old apple tree. It gets a lot of my attention, mostly from procrastination, but, every so often, I’ll get a shock when I notice its seasonal development.

Right now, it is back to nicely ripening its generous haul of red glossy fruit. I feel like perhaps a little less of a crop than last year? In a month, I will be watching the birds begin feasting for breakfast, lunch and dinner and, once again, wonder why, oh why, do my neighbours never ever harvest the fruit for themselves? Then, I will witness its slow loss of leaves revealing the gnarly old limbs and drastically unveiling the direct line of sight from their living room window into our kitchen, reminding me to limit any nude washing of dishes (it’s not actually a thing, but you know…).

Its spring blossom comes in later than the plums and cherry trees in my garden, but I always think it’s the most beautiful. The acid green leaf growth of early summer that follows returns our privacy once again and I watch with honest intrigue as those tiny little green balls begin their fattening up as is demanded every year.

“An interest in gardening isn’t a pre-requisite to a connection with the cycles of the planet. For me, this one tree anchors me to the bigger picture and lifts my head back out into the world when I find myself navel-gazing.”

My neighbours apple tree in autumn, presenting its huge haul of “un picked” apples.

I’d hazard a guess it has been doing its same routine for longer than I have been accruing birthdays (coming up to 40 of them!) and I truly find comfort and calm in noting that fact.

Plenty of studies and books are dedicated to the proven benefits of connecting with nature, but I don’t think that it has to be done in an intensive, or hands-on way. I think finding your own “apple tree” or patch of planting will open yourself up to the positive, soothing effect of stepping out of your life and into the moment. Not thinking about yourself, your problems, your finances, your friends and family, global pandemics, scary politics or global warming – just about the natural world silently holding it all together.

This article was first featured in my Stuff ‘Homed’ gardening column for beginners and The Press on March 11th 2021
All words and images are my own, shot in my garden in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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Tuning into the seasons

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