August Berries and the Delight of All Weather: Thoreau and Ruskin Reflect
Today's Garden Words were featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest,
most beautiful words of all.
August 7, 2019
Henry David Thoreau perfectly captures the rich fullness of August in this evocative passage:
“In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs.”
Thoreau’s words paint a vivid picture of nature’s cycle: how the promise of flowers gives way to the weight and color of ripening fruit.
The wild bees, once busy among the blossoms, have played their part in the miracle of growth, and now the branches bow beneath their own bounty.
This is a moment of abundance, but also of fragility — the lovely tension between strength and surrender.
Adding to this celebration of nature’s moods, the great art critic and thinker John Ruskin reminds us that there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
He wrote:
“Summer is delicious; rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
Ruskin’s joyful acceptance invites us to embrace all the elements that nurture the garden and life itself.
Whether it be the soothing rain that feeds roots or the brisk wind that challenges and strengthens, every season’s touch is a gift.
Gardening, like living, is an act of both endurance and delight.
Together, these reflections remind us to savor the fullness of August: the bright weight of crimson berries, the hum of bees, the shifting weather that instructs patience and gratitude.
August holds the grace of ripening — a season that asks us to witness maturity and marvel at the tender power of nature’s cycles.