We will be up at an ungodly hour on Monday morning to catch a plane for a fortnight’s retreat to Greece. It is the time we prefer to go away. When the harvest is mostly in, and we can leave the garden to relax into autumn. There will be a push over the weekend to harvest seed that will have dropped by the time we return and to pick the pears and the apples that will become windfalls if we don’t. But it will be important in the flurry to put a moment or two aside to look at what we are about to miss. At the first perfectly formed goblets of the Colchicum autumnale and the gold of the Sternbergia lutea that have just begun their season.

Though for years now we have made this our time to be away, I have always planned for continuity. For the relay of the new and the succession of interest that can run the duration of the growing season. As we leave, the first asters are already waning, pulled down by the rain or simply having had their day but it is good to know that the late forms, which are still in bud and standing tall, will have the energy in them yet to claim October.