Man’s world

In which our cynical Southern man is unexpectedly overtaken by the simple, gentle beauty of autumn

Despite himself, Joe Bennett succumbs to the beauty of autumn

So another summer fades and autumn settles on the land. Autumn, the season of remembering, a time when the temptation is to look back, a temptation I have succumbed to. And what I saw when I looked back surprised me.

Regular readers will be aware that as a gardener, I have leant towards vegetables. For me, the comestible has outranked the aesthetic. I have put carrots on the front burner and chrysanthemums on the back.

As the great Roman gardener Nasturtius put it: ut comeam hortavi. I have gardened in order to eat.

Yet time passes and things change. And we often don’t notice that time has passed until something like the arrival of autumn prompts us to reflect on it.

Solus, wrote the great Nasturtius, in humero mirando tempus videtur. Time is visible only to one who looks over his shoulder, which, as I am sure you will agree, is as profound a sentiment as you are likely to find on the back page of a gardening magazine anywhere in the world.

For if we look ahead of us, time is invisible. If we look around us, time is invisible. But if we look back, the passage of time is like size 12 footprints in a well-hoed bed. You just can’t miss it.

And as I look back I realise, with something approaching shock, that time has wrought a change in me. Gradually, and without my paying much attention, my gardening focus has shifted away from the comestible and towards the aesthetic. These days, I garden less and less for the stomach and more and more for the soul. The chrysanthemum and the carrot have switched burners.

By way of illustration, follow me now up these steps to what was once my kitchen garden. Behold the raised beds where in former years the beans have been and the sprouts have sprouted and the green peas have greenly peaed. And what do you see now? Nothing but the occasional self-sown carrot quietly bifurcating all on its own.

Yet as we make our way back down the steps towards the house and deck – don’t let the dog get under your feet now – see how the pots and tubs and planters have proliferated, all full of plants I would once have had no use for: plants of no practical, medicinal or nutritional value.

Those there, would you believe it, are my lilies. They are now shrinking back under the soil to ride out the cruelties of winter but a few short months ago they were startling in their magnificence, as flagrant as drag queens (and yes, that’s Nasturtius again: quamquam reginas

tractas flagrantes. To see them was to feel uplifted). Five years ago I thought azalea was an African country. But now, as I sail ever closer to the safe harbour of the state pension, I find I have azaleas for Africa, all arrayed on my deck in their ceramic pots and for half the summer they were a froth of red and pink and white. And my heart frothed at the sight of them. My discoveries of the summer just gone have been the old stalwarts, the zinnia and verbena. Have I words for the glory that is the zinnia, its sunny thrust of abundance? Or for the spreading wonder of verbena, its mat of tiny modest flowers, its limitless power to please? I have not. But you know who had. Zinniam verbenamque amo, said Nasturtius. I don’t think I need to translate. Man cannot live by vegetables alone.