CHESTNUT WISDOM

After the long rains, on this at last sunny morning of blue sky filled with fine white clouds swelling their chests I was instantly out in the garden doing necessary tasks that didn't distract me too much from the beauty of the morning, such as slowly taking down the long net from the bush bean shoots. As I stood there rolling up the green length, I smelled on the breeze that musky fragrance that is the chestnut tree, engaged in the first step of chestnut creation-- taking advantage of this generosity of weather to put on its annual arboreal show. Now in full heat, it was thrusting all its catkins out into the air for maximum output of musk, the fragrance washing over me on the morning breeze.

It made me look up, and there above me like its own cloud beneath the big others rose the chestnut, resembling a big cauliflower, festooned with all its ivory catkins (great word, that), limbs outstretched to all the moths and butterflies, bees and beetles, flying bugs of every description that were practically lining up in the blue air to get some of that rare nectar. Even the scoldy bulbul broke off from his tirade about me being near his strawberries and began diving here and there into the big white waves after the wreaths of sweet blossoms and the swarms of bugs. I of no wings down there on the ground was fully pleased to just stand there on my own time, draped with green garden netting, and watch it all going on up there.

What richness of life was centered by that time-rounded tree, draped in a shawl of old lace, arms outstretched in the success of being, offering scintillas of its own sweetness in exchange for chestnuts it will grow and one day let go of, bright-coated treasures I will gather by the bucketful and be nourished by, as I am nourished even now by realizing that the old tree has always known these things...