Bones of the Land: Wyeth’s Solitude and Hirshfield’s Garden Task

November 20, 2019

On this day, as autumn deepens and the garden sheds its lush disguises, we pause to consider the raw, stark beauty hidden beneath the fading foliage.

There is a certain truth to be found in the “bone structure” of the landscape—the quiet, bare essence that reveals itself only when the summer’s opulence retreats.

It is in this season of naked honesty that the gardener understands the work and wonder that persist unseen beneath the surface.

"I prefer winter and fall when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -
the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.

Something waits beneath it;
the whole story doesn't show."

– Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth’s words touch a gardener’s soul, stirring a reverence for the quiet skeleton of the earth.

The “loneliness” he speaks of is not emptiness but an invitation—a whisper that the garden’s full story is layered, waiting patiently beneath the surface, like a secret script written in roots and memory.

It is a reminder that even lifeless appearances conceal vibrant potential.

In the evenings
I scrape my fingernails clean,
hunt through old catalogues for new seed,
oil work boots and shears.

This garden is no metaphor --
more a task that swallows you into itself,
earth using, as always, everything it can.

– Jane Hirshfield, November, Remembering Voltaire

Jane Hirshfield brings us back from poetic reflection to the gardener’s gritty reality. Her garden “is no metaphor,” but an all-consuming labor where earth’s demands are literal and ceaseless.

Yet there is a quiet poetry too—in the scraped fingernails, the anticipation in seed catalogs, the ritual of oiling boots and sharpening shears.

It is a tangible love story between gardener and soil, humble and unvarnished, written hand in hand with the land’s enduring pulse.

Together, these voices remind us as autumn wanes: beneath each barren branch and frosted morn, life waits to stir again.

The garden teaches patience—for what is hidden today will bloom tomorrow, and the story, in all its complexity, will continue to unfold.