Death in the Garden

Edgar Allen Poe’s mother, Elizabeth, was famously beautiful. She was a child star by age 10, married off at 13, widowed by 14, then remarried by 15. Her second husband, whose name was Poe, abandoned her and three week old Edgar, never to be seen again.

Baby Edgar spent the first years of his life in the theatre where Elizabeth performed Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. He often watched his mother plunge a dagger into her heart and die, then pull it out backstage and wash up for dinner. But his childhood became even more depressing when as a toddler, he stood by and watched his 24-year-old mother die from consumption.

It’s no wonder that beauty and death occupied so much of Poe’s thoughts. He must have lived with the notion that death wasn’t a permanent state so much as just another reality. He also saw beauty as a component of death. One was inextricably linked with the other.

I think of Poe when I stand in the remains of my vegetable garden. There's a macabre appearance now to many of the plants that were once strong and beautiful. They're shriveled and dead. Of course, it's no surprise. Very few vegetables survive past their growing season. (If you're curious, here's a list.)

An Okra bud that died during the cold nights of fall.

I know a lot about native plants and perennial gardening, but the vegetables I planted this year were a new experience. They were impressively lush and healthy. As productive as they were, I now need to gather the dead and move them to the compost.

Plants are beautiful, even when they die. As winter approaches, they decompose into masses of muted colors and textures. These images are easier to appreciate because they're a temporary state. The garden will be back in bloom after a dramatic pause. It's just an intermission in the theatre of life.