Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Death In The Garden

If life draws us into the garden, death—not to be too dramatic about it—waits there too. That’s part of the gardener’s education. Take leaves, for instance.

As the great Brit Graham Stewart Thomas wrote, with admirable English restraint, “If you garden hand in hand with leaves — either green and growing or brown and decaying — you will find gardening much easier.”

Blazing autumn colors reflect exposed sugars and carbs that leaves were producing all summer under their cloak of chlorophyll. When they fall, bacteria and fungi break it all back down into basic nutrients of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (the iconic N-P-K you see on fertilizer bags) that complete the cycle by replenishing the plants that produced them. Read the entire article.

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