So Farewell then,
August:
You were summer once
But not this year;
Not here.
Still the greenery is looking good and provides an effective backdrop when a flower does occasionally decide to shine its way into the gloom.
As I move from summer to autumn I find myself reflecting - on the year as it has gone so far and on what the few remaining months may hold for life in a back garden.
What have I done so far? Have I achieved anything?
Is there anything more I can still do?
I step back a bit to see if I can see.
Maybe a picture begins to form.
So I step back a little further and look.
There's a web on the swing and wild honeysuckle has made its first grab. There are Dahlias and Pelargoniums flowering which I managed to overwinter. Some Pot Marigold I let self-seed. Some Fennel, Filipendula and Fuchsia which I cut back hard and let re-grow. Some Rosemary to which I did nothing. And hedging and trees that were here when I came (the trees aren't even mine, they just decorate my garden).
Nature has done a lot but what have I achieved?
Well, I have achieved this - a dry border half empty of plants and the other half congested with plants that have gone over.
I am a master of garden design of a kind I have never seen in any glossy magazine or colour supplement.
But there is some late Dutch honeysuckle in flower.
Late-flowering Dutch Honeysuckle: Lonicera periclymenum 'Serotina'.
Meanwhile, the earlier flowering honeysuckle. Lonicera periclymenum 'Graham Thomas' is now producing tempting clusters of red berries.
The Alliums are preparing to give up seed that may provide flowers for years to come.
Maybe.
If I remember to sow them and remember to sow them properly.
But if I forget, the seeds that drop from the heads I shall leave over the winter will remember to their own thing.
And speaking of remembering, this is Rosemary for Remembrance - Rosmarinus officinalis: as I say, it has just done its own thing.
So, have I done anything? A lot of what I have done seems to have involved doing nothing.
I did nothing here. When I saw the seedling emerge which had sown itself, I did not weed - I did not hoe - I did not spray weedkiller - I did not cover with a mulch or fabric to suppress growth.
I did nothing and now there is the rosette of a Foxglove - Digitalis purpurea - that will put up a flower in the next year.
Maybe. Probably. Maybe.
I guess I did do something here, although most of it had been done before I came along. These Wood Avens - Geum urbanum - were seed collected from plants at Silverburn, Fife and those plants had grown for I don't know how long and had come from who and where all the way back to . . . . well, who knows?
I just collected the seed, sowed it and left it outside. I pricked it out in the spring, potted it on in early summer and I planted out these three plants today. I did the smallest part.
And I continue to do the smallest part - in anticipation of a future that may never come.
I've pinned those runners from the strawberry plants down on the top of small pots in the hope they will root and give fruit in years to come.
I've planted my homegrown Ox eye daisies - Leucanthemum vulgare - over the top of fresh bulbs of Snake's Head Fritillary - Fritillaria meleagris.
I'm hoping they will flower through and over the grass in years to come.
And against the vagaries of slugs and rust fungus and leaving them in their bath too long, I seem to be managing to help raise six Hollyhocks - Alcea rosea.
I hope that even in this sun starved spot they might choose to flower one day.
Maybe.
Sometimes, after all this doing nothing or very little I end up with one little flower head.
Depression would tell me this is all wasted effort and false optimism for a puny reward.
Experience tells me that it has taken hundreds of millions of years for this one little flower head to make it here, today, right now, in my little back garden.
And the life-force within me, tells me that is truly amazing.
So farewell then August. It may have been a rather dull, cold and wet summer in this little corner of the universe, but the passage of time remains a beautiful thing indeed.
