September is surely one of the most beautiful months. Evenings cooling, grass wet again with dew, but warmth still in the sun. The tiredness that sometimes hangs over August is now refreshed after rains. The meadows flushed with new green and germination happening everywhere. A rash of poppy seedlings seizing the moment to establish themselves before winter and, of course, the sea of dandelions. The very moment I thought about back in May when the airborne seed moved in silken clouds down the valley, but I’d all but forgotten whilst they lay dormant in the dry weeks of summer.

With the change we welcome a new wave of energy in the garden. The first of the asters, the sudden emergence of naked colchicum and smatterings of autumn flowering cyclamen, the harbingers of this shoulder season. Most lovely of all on this particular September day is the Clematis ‘Sundance’ which has been readying itself for autumn. I have it on the edge of the garden close to the milking barn veranda where, if ever we do sit and look, we are inclined to catch the warming, morning rays. The covered veranda is our breakfast place, so it is a moment in the garden which affords close scrutiny and where we need the detail to satisfy the time we take to pause there. In spring we have Paeonia mlokosewitschii, followed by navy blue camassias twinned with the blackest Iris chrysographes.