Suddenly it is September, a month of most beautiful light and a forgiving falling away of the growing season. After weeks without rain, recent deluges have seen us replenished. Brown lawns already greened up and first growth on the meadow banks where they were cut back hard just last week. The cyclamen are doing what they do best in these cross over weeks between late summer and autumn proper, huddling in the shadows and moving now to show you where they really want to be, which is not always where you planted them. I step over their tight huddles where they are beginning new colonies in the gravelly edges of the path away from too much competition. Happy to enjoy them now that I have given in to the reality that we have begun the autumn.

As the energy wanes, there is a notable shift in the perennial plantings. The autumn bloomers begin to cover for plants that have come and gone, the Japanese wind anemones rising and making it their time and asters joining them as the evenings draw in. In these weeks between seasons there is a significant surge from the late season annuals, which proclaim loudly as they rally to complete their life cycles. Right about now, when they flare and make themselves felt, we remind ourselves that the effort of sowing them in the busiest weeks of spring, pays out now and most handsomely.