Susanna Syassen

The peas have been climbing for weeks.

Each morning they appear much the same.

A row of green stems against the mesh.
A tendril reaching outward.
Leaves opening towards the light.

Then one morning, a flower.

It is difficult to say when it arrived.

The days before looked no different from the days after.

The change was taking place long before it could be seen.

The garden is full of these moments.

Currants swelling beneath their leaves.

Apples forming where blossom once held the branch.

Beans twisting around their supports.

The eye searches for arrival.

The garden offers something else.

A season spent becoming.

For days, sometimes weeks, very little appears to happen.

The same path.

The same beds.

The same careful routines.

Watering.

Weeding.

Looking.

Then the light shifts.

The flower opens.

The fruit begins to colour.

What seemed stillness reveals itself as movement.

Perhaps this is why a garden changes our experience of time.

Not because it slows anything down.

The peas climb at the pace they always have.

The apples ripen according to their own season.

The garden simply makes visible what is often overlooked.

That much of life unfolds before it can be seen.

A tendril reaches.

A bud forms.

The season turns.

Only later do we notice that it has already begun.

Continue reading : Before Spring