November Morning in My Garden

I have written a lot about gardening since beginning this blog in 2007, when I was living with my family near Atlanta. (My first post about gardens, here.) I love gardening. It's a sanity-maintaining exercise, requiring hard work as well as organizational and aesthetic skills. It's also a philosophical enterprise, as one confronts the cycle of the seasons. Voltaire used the garden as a metaphor for how we should live, as a corrective between optimism and despair. Taking my camera into the garden encourages me to look more closely at the burgeoning life there that we often overlook in our busyness. Some people look to the stars for perspective on our place in the universe; I look to my garden.

Here in the middle of November, my garden in southeast Louisiana is still full of life.

Compare the size of this bee--in relation to the length of the flowers--to that of the bee below.

I like the watercolor effect of this photo.

These little guys are prolific in my garden, and I like capturing them in different poses. Here one hides in a pot of mums.

This lizard is in camouflage among the basil and tarragon.

another view of a lizard in my potted chrysanthemums

purple basil blooms

leafy dill--I am interested in seeing how long it survives through the winter.