Writing about evening gardens seems like a pretty silly thing for someone who is night blind to attempt. And yet, evening is my favorite time in the gardens, and I have always wanted to expound on this magic time.
But I thought about it. My cats, navigating as easily as if they had miner's lanterns attached to their little foreheads, can navigate easily after dark; maybe they can see and enjoy all the nuances and delicate points of each flower within eyeshot - but very few people can - even those with good vision. Fortunately, that's not the point of the evening garden.
Gardens at night are about fragrance; they are about sound; they are about textures, about light and shadow play - all things that even the night blind can enjoy to the hilt.
Most summer evenings when dinner is done my husband leads me across the stone path to the gazebo and we sit in the quiet evening and just listen and feel. Often as not, I have my eyes shut.
I can hear the rush of the waterfall into the pond across from me, and the leaves rustling all around me. Sometimes I count the chirps of the crickets and try to guess the temperature. Sometimes I just amuse myself by trying to hum along to the wind chimes. Occasionally I can hear a sleepy bird cheeping. Then a car goes by and shines its lights into our garage. I can hear the rooster, who sleeps on the garage door opener crow, probably thinking that he has just experienced the shortest day on record.
Something about evening seems to magnify sound. Unfortunately, it also magnifies the sound of trucks and tractor/trailers roaring on the I-81 overpass that runs nearly directly overhead, which is why we created a waterfall that was as noisy as possible. That's probably why my husband insisted on installing a stereo system with quad speakers in the gazebo, but he now knows better than to turn it on when I'm around. It is, I have discovered, quite possible to focus on the water and crickets, and shut out the less desirable intrusions altogether, but quite impossible to mentally eliminate the drone of Leonard Cohen at the same time. But with the stereo off, and my eyes at half mast I can hear the grasses rustling in the breeze, and the wind making the tree limbs shudder gently. In autumn I can hear the gentle plop of apples falling from the tree, and sometimes, to my dismay, the thud of deer hoofs racing across the yard after dining on something which I am thankful I won't have to know about until daylight.
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