Autumn is on its way and the garden is beginning to shut down. Soon leaves will start to turn orange and red. I am told that the weather this year has been unusually good for photosynthesis and as such many plants are carrying high levels of sugar. This means we are likely to see a particularly colourful autumn this year. Add to that, the fact that some plants have been tricked into flowering again by a last minute Indian summer, and it is a truly amazing time to be looking at what is happening in the garden.
A few months ago when I was working I remember rushing out to the car sticks in hand bag falling off shoulder and running into a web that a spider had spun across the archway. I remember cursing the spider as I removed silk from my face and then, having had a pang of guilt recriminating myself for destroying his/her web. I ended up concluding that it was a stupid place for a spider to put a web. I then threw everything into the car and rushed off to work.
A couple of weeks ago I was again leaving the house, this time considerably slower and less cluttered. This time I had time to stop and admire the spider's work before ducking under it and heading off. The image of the beautiful web hanging in the Jasmine framed archway around our front door stuck in my mind. It is now two weeks later and I can still see how the sun glinted on the web which was set off by the greens of the jasmine leaves.
That day I learnt a valuable lesson; When you rush through life you may occasionally notice things, particularly if they slap you in the face, but the memories of them are indistinct and fade, smothered by the adverse feelings associated with rushing. But if you take time to live each moment of your life at the speed at which it was designed to be lived at, you will notice more, remember more and enjoy your life more.
Who knows if you then take the time to write about it, you may even be able to share the moment with others and make a moment in time seem like an age.
Here is my poem; not as grand as the spiders web and not as beautiful as the Jasmine, but enough for me to share the moment. I hope you enjoy it;
Framed
Broken sun light shines through the jasmine
which wrecks the symmetry of the stone arch.
The jumble of green leaves and white flowers,
burst from the frame, as if to claim nature has no order.
Yet at the apex of the curve, the light hints -
as it glints through drops on a line, that this is not so.
Here in this space, of scented chaos
hangs a pure symmetry of silken thread.
Did the spider know when it wove its web
of nature’s plan to frame it?
John Carré Buchanan
16 September 2011
