As the days start to shorten, I can play with time in the garden by pruning a plant to make it bloom later. By changing the position of a potted tomato plant, I can make its fruit ripen at a different time.
Like the tomato, I will ripen at different rates in different settings; my mind and body are tied to what the senses feed them. And so I can also manipulate how I feel and my perception of time by going to a location in which the season is ahead or behind the season I have left.
Driving north to Wisconsin in July from my Ohio Valley home, I return to the exhilaration of an Ohio June. If I continue north to Ontario, I can still find May.
If I go west into the Canadian Rockies, I can find April waiting for me with its spring beauties and trilliums.
Adjusting time by changing space, I am able to lengthen the days and the seasons.
I can extend and extend, until I have found the last edge of summer, until I cant go any further, until I can prune back nothing more, until I have passed the high timberline of time and finally retreat to memory and the slow time of winter and renewal.
Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with more notes on the seasons. In the meantime, prune your tomatoes. Take a drive back into spring. Mess with time.
