The relief of September is with us. Soft days to contrast the tough summer of heat and weeks of unrelenting blue. Gentle rains, drizzle and grey skies and the fields beyond us flushing green again and from day to day more familiar. The pears, laden with a summer’s worth of ripening, begin to fall in what feels like a mass exodus from their branches. There is always a surfeit in this beautiful month of plenty and we have learned to take what we need and to not fret over the feeling of waste. Trays full are put out on the lane and the remainder soon vanish to the critters.

The garden is fuller than it has been all summer. Leaning into the paths where a season’s worth of growth and seed weights the planting. I am pleased I made the paths wide enough for two people to walk side by side when we laid the garden out, but you would never know that now as you push through damp foliage and the reach of the perennials leaning. Laden now, at their full extent and flushing a September wave of new autumnal interest alongside what has come before.