"A soft and gleaming season"

The Marguerite daisies finally flopped over in a tangled mess, although they lasted about a month longer than usual. This week I cut them off right at the ground, and then felt guilty thinking how a little bare space is easy on the eye at the end of summer.

The Washington Post garden columnist Henry Mitchell once wrote: there is no need to think of September as the trash bin of the year, with just scraps of leftover things in the garden, because many things are only coming to perfection at the end of summer--a soft and gleaming season.

You've heard enough about dahlias to last another year, but one more time-- they've never been more beautiful in this yard. I'm sure they would wipe out the competition at the county fair but I'm too lazy to drive them to Puyallup. The Autumn Sedum is prettiest now, although it's one of those underrated plants that blends in with everything. I don't remember propagating so much of it but it's growing everywhere. Sedum is covered with bees on warm days and when I water they swarm up like crazy, but I've never been stung by one of those little creatures. A few nice people must have honey hives tucked away in the city, or there wouldn't be so many of them.

Usually the yellow jackets are annoying in September and John puts out the traps, but there's been no sign of them for the last two years.