The Summer-Weary Garden

The garden, our well-tempered companion
throughout the summer months, generously
offering up fragrance, drama, colour and
ongoing expectations in its humble way,
is beginning to exude the inevitable end-of-season
weariness. Its aerial visitors have become fewer
in number and delightful variety. Already,
at night, the garden hears their wings and
chirps signalling the southern migratory journey,
preparing to abandon it to cooler days and nights.

Late-summer bloomers like Japanese anemones,
Chinese lanterns, asters, turtleheads, third-wind
roses, purple loosestrife, black-eyed Susans
and coneflowers still glory the garden, but the
ornamental trees and shrubs are tumbling their
foliage in growth excess, longing for surcease and
the inevitable rest that winter allows them. Lawns
and borders are stiff with discarded cones, heavy
with pitch, and needles turning green grass to an
orange-overlaid resting coverlet, inviting frost.