Our lives are a succession of bloom

The asters are in bloom—the last in the parade of flowering things. 

In a week or so it’ll be time to clean up the remnants of my summer garden. I’ll truck wheelbarrows filled with dried up brown-eyed Susans, roses, and sedums down to the compost pile. And that will be the end of that.

I remember the first wave of color. In early June our lilac bush was dripping with purple flowers. It smelled like honey and made me feel as if summer would string on forever. But one morning in early July, I was having my coffee on the patio when I realized that the mood in the garden had changed. The lilac was spent–its dried-up blossoms still clinging on and several spindly, dead limbs reaching haphazardly into the sky.  A wave of sadness washed over me. Summer was a third of the way over.

I trudged to the garage to get my snippers. To cut the dead blossoms and branches, I had to lean across a large bed of daylilies encircling the bush—a tricky maneuver. As I teetered over the plants, I noticed that the daylily buds were just starting to open. They would probably be in full bloom by the end of the week–their bright oranges and yellows replacing the soft purple of the lilacs. As the daylilies died, the phlox would awaken. And the asters after that. 

In gardening they call this “succession planting for bloom,” when different plant varieties are strategically placed together so that they blossom in sequence, bringing you season-round color. If all of the flowers bloomed at the same time, it would be like a fireworks show—lots of color all at once and then nothing.

Sometimes there is a bit of a wait between bursts of color. This is called the flowering gap—the time period between one group of blooms and another, when there’s more green and less color. It’s a quiet pause in the garden.

The flowering gap

One of the things I love about gardening is all the great metaphors that come to mind when I’m planting, weeding, and trimming. The metaphor that hit me that day was this:

Our lives are a succession of bloom, with flowering gaps that can be uncomfortably long. 

When the sweet memory of lilac hangs on and the daylilies aren’t quite ready to open.

This has been a year unlike any other—with my adult kids busy working, schooling, and socializing far away. Drip by drip, each month since my youngest left for college, I’ve slowly accepted that the “young, active mothering” part of my identity is past its flowering stage–I don’t know if there will ever come a time when I don’t mourn that loss. 

I feel like I’m standing on the shore watching yet another stage of my life drift into the horizon. And I’ve struggled to envision what’s left for me on the shore.

The pause in the garden is real.

And yet, that morning in mid-summer, those delicate daylily buds were a reminder that new color is always on its way. I just have to keep an eye out for the next bloom in succession.

It comes in the form of a quiet afternoon, like this, when I can sit and write for an hour or two without feeling rushed or hemmed in by everyone else’s schedule. 

It comes in the long run that I’ll take before dinner and in the book I’ll read in those uninterrupted hours before bed. 

It comes in the friendships, stitched together by two decades of Christmas cards, that I’ve picked back up over the past few months. And in the more frequent visits back home to spend time with my parents and relatives. 

And it comes in letting go of that feeling of being responsible for everyone’s health and happiness–and realizing that they’re doing just fine on their own. And really, so am I.

I have a tendency to miss what’s right underfoot because I’ve got my head twisted around looking behind me. So I’m working on this. On being present to the beautiful blooms in my life instead of mourning the waves of color that have come and gone.

Because yes, the lilac was tender and sweet, and its soft purple reminded me of Easter. But the wild asters, twirling madly in the glass vase on the kitchen counter, have a freedom about them that feels anticipatory. LIke anything might happen. 

And it might.