"It was a sunny day in early July when I came to the Ripton farm. I sat on the rock outside Frost's writing cabin and listened to the whir of the poplar leaves at the edge of the woods and the sweet song of a hermit thrush. The tall grasses at the base of the apple trees were rich with wildflowers - pale yellow foxgloves, clover, flax, Indian paintbrush, Queen Anne's lace, daisies and buttercups. A robin perched in the branches of a tree above a cluster of small green apples.
It was more powerful than I had imagined, finding Frost's last orchard still thriving, the trees with fruit on them. Everything was so alive in that little spot and I was struck by the continuum of life, by how the birds used the orchard as they probably always had, by how the apples reappeared summer after summer. It was all praise and all miracle. Edward Thomas was right about a line of apples being the same as a line of poetry in another language. And while Frost was no longer there to tend his orchard, it persisted. And because he had thought about it as it was in that moment, with fruit on the trees and the trees in full maturity, it still contained him.
The poet may die, but the poetry continues."
From The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys.
The photograph was taken yesterday in the newly reopened Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - it was so good to be back there.
