Hope in Endings

I'm feeling a bit sad. We are off to WOMAD this weekend but our usual group of friends who attend is depleted this year. My northern hemisphere friends are posting pictures of first leaves, returning birds, and other signs of the approach of spring. I have been feeling very aware of endings.

This morning I decided to go for a little walk and look at the signs of summer coming to an end, to try to find some beauty in endings. What I found was not just beautiful, but surprising.

 Pumpkins. Food, and seeds for next spring and summer growing - hope for the future.

One last egg. Not really going to come to anything, given we have no rooster, but certainly a symbol of hope.

Feathers. The chooks are moulting and egg laying is becoming rare. But they are losing their old, tatty feathers, and ceasing to lay, in preparation for growing fresh new feathers. They will start laying again some time after the shortest day - one of the first hopeful signs that spring will return.

The fruit is coming to an end but as well as the tasty flesh, fruit contains the seed of future trees.

These peaches are delicious, and came off a tree that grew from a peach stone discarded under a friend's plum tree. The plums were yummy, but we aren't disappointed with the surprise fruit.

The beans are still producing, but at a reduced rate. I find big, fat, tough, overgrown beans hiding among the leaves - seed for next spring. Hope.

These tomatoes were grown from seed from last year's plants grown from cherry tomatoes given by a friend the year before. They are so sweet and flavoursome. We will save seed again. Sweet hope.

 The lemon tree's hopeful promise is fast becoming reality.

 As is that of these sweet fruit on a shrub I bought as 'Chilean guava', but have seen under various other names.

 Among  the die-off of the silver beet and parsley, new silver beet plants have emerged for winter eating.

The pine nut tree is offering false hope with this small cone - but it is still a promise of years to come - maybe next year we will have a few full-sized cones containing nuts.

These trees have almost doubled in size this year, despite the crazy weather, so next year I hope to make twice as many bottles of delicious elder-flower cordial.

Two of the bamboo roots we planted in spring, and which lost their leaves, have rallied and grown. One day I'll have our own big fat bamboo to make structures of varying kinds.

Bob the Dog gives a wonderful and constant example of a life lived in hope.

Spike just lives in hope that Bob won't notice him, so he can leap out and scratch the poor fellow on the nose.

I hope that my friend Violet will come back from America to visit me one day. This year the artichokes she gave me are very late, and are just now about to open their beautiful sunflower buds to smile at me.

And though the remaining wild carrot flowers are small, and most have died, they aren't really dead, but rather, turned to stunning seed heads, so I can already imagine next year's fields of my favourite wild flower.