It Lives

I’ve recently become interested in photographing the decaying garden. It started in the spring when I spent an hour photographing a garden while it was still brown but on the verge of exploding into green. I’m starting to appreciate both the garden and nature’s seasons on the whole. I’ve always had such a block towards winter because of the cold, but photography is bringing me around simply because I need to be out there in it in order to take pictures of it.

And so now that the garden season is over I am turning my attention to the way things look as the plants prepare for dormancy. I love the bare structures; tomato cages, and homemade trellises that are left behind; the look of the plants as they break down to architectural skeletons and stringy vines bearing floppy leaves. I am discovering that I had spent so much time focussing on the garden through the summer months that I had lost sight of the fact that it stays alive in it’s own way through the remaining months of the year. I am starting to see it and appreciate it in new ways.

Here are a few examples:

tomatocages.jpg sunflower_fall.jpg tomatocages_white.jpg garden_nov.jpg
Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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3 thoughts on “It Lives

  1. late autumn, early winter, deep winter, early spring – wonderful things happen in the garden that we barely notice. your pictures are wonderfully evocative! i’d love to see more! ;-)

  2. The camera is an old and cheap medium format slr from China called a Chang Cheng or Great Wall.

    Sergio you are very right. Wonderful things are always happening in the garden. I don’t care if I sound cheeseball saying that.

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