Some days it truly is a masterpiece - other days it falls short. But a garden is a process, rather than a finished product, and what falls short one day may bloom beautifully the next. One spot in the garden will peak and step into the background, allowing another area to become center stage. There are peak days all over the yard. Every day brings new ones.
Every day is full of discoveries, as well as new challenges.
If the garden were at its peak all day every day of the gardening season I would begin to feel quite superfluous. I need those challenges, as much as I need the ability to see not just the garden that is, but also the garden it could be. If the garden were always at peak there would be nothing for me to do. I wouldn't be a gardener - just a kind of master gatekeeper allowing people to come and gaze and then go away again, trying hard to feel proud of something that actually got along quite well without me. I am grateful for the bare spots and the overcrowded ones, the roses that have turned into many-clawed monsters and the peony that refuses to prosper, as well as for the thousands of winged maple seedlings that have taken root and are trying to grow in my rock garden.