Miller Time Friday: September Comes, Bearing Gifts

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

Robert Browning

It was cold when I got up yesterday.

Not freezing cold, mind you.  But cold enough to remind me that Fall is coming.  cold enough for boots and high socks.

I don't mind.

If May and June represent Birth in the garden, July and early August, the Party, September is the Morning After, kind of faded, kind of messy, but the memories of the good times persist everywhere.

The colours are muted now, save the Brown-eyed Susan's.

This is white-turning-to-pink season, green-turning-to-brown, the greys, long hidden behind summer's green skirts shyly showing themselves again. 

 

 

Butch is getting ready to go to sleep..

It is dark by eight p.m. and the sky doesn't begin to lighten until close to six a.m.

We are in the brief period of time before the last blaze of colour, which I often think of as the last supper before the inevitable end, when we bundle ourselves up and steel ourselves for the long winter ahead.  But that still seems far away.

Here and there in the garden is the odd supernova burning itself out:

the Bee Balm that won't quit

the Dahlia reminding you of how beautiful it is so you will remember to dig up their bulbs so they will have another day

the sedum, which has waited and watched so patiently all summer long as the showier flowers did their thing, now suddenly the star of the garden.

The pots in the urns out front are replaced with Mums in autumnal shades. 

You wonder how many more mornings until the Hummingbirds call it a day and decide to head off to Mexico and you wonder if perhaps they wouldn't like company on the journey.

September is old-money, bearing tasteful, muted gifts, the equivalent of your grandmother giving you cashmere mittens or a nice watch.  At the moment, you might  think "Hey, I really wanted that trendy new item", but then over time, you realize that  these gifts are the gifts you turn to time again.

I always "abandon" the garden in August, save the herbs and the veggies.  As the weather cools, I begin the weeding and the cleaning up, begin to top-dress the beds with the compost  I have worked so hard to make all summer.  I do this slowly, enjoying every dragonfly, beetle, spider's web. 

There are always regrets at the end of a gardening season: a plant that never bloomed, a bed that got too overgrown, the feeling that one should have spent the whole summer just sitting there, watching it all.  I always feel very Thorton Wilder "Our Town"-ish in the fall, sentimentalist that I am. 

Mostly, I just feel gratitude.  I think of the billions of people around the world who would feel nothing but bliss to live in this little house with this garden, in good health.  I forget that, caught up as I am in my day-to-day life, fussing about broken-down cars (another post), rejection slips (another post), housework, yard work, soul work yet to do.  The great thing about our troubles is that they are always there if we want to find them.  Tonight, I am going think about honeysuckle blossoms...

....and be grateful...

In honour of the rack and ruin and the gorgeousness that are our lives, I propose a little cocktail in honour of my faithful friend...

Honeysuckle

50ml Golden Rum
25ml Fresh lime juice
1 bar spoon of clear honey

Instructions

Shake the Rum and lime juice with ice, add honey and shake again, Strain into a cocktail glass, Garnish with a wedge of lime.

You just know there will be some honeysuckle on that glass, too...

Have the loveliest of Fridays and stay safe out there!  And remember: smell those flowers and carpe that diem!