Toward Late Summer
I can feel it — summer days thickening. Afternoons swollen with activity. Evenings and mornings besieged by commitments. It’s fun and adventurous and sometimes a bit too much. I get caught up in “there are only so many.”
And then there is less light in the early morning, a golden hue to afternoon sunshine, crickets and cicadas singing, because slowly we move toward late summer. Designing bouquets around slender arcing stems and poised, nonplussed blossoms smooths summer’s busyness. The snapdragons are enjoying a moment in the garden.
But the grapevine, not as much. A winged armada of Japanese beetles descends, so I skulk around winding tendrils and peer through thick green leaves to find these annoying pests munching on a branch or hiding beneath a canopy of tiny grapes. When I find one, I pluck it into a bowl of soapy water. I’m in close contact with a whole ecosystem of other beneficial bugs that seek refuge in the grapevine, too. I’ve spotted bees sleeping, ants clustering on a vine tendril, and dragonflies busily winging their landing amid the forest-like vines. What luck to see so much in the garden.
The first dahlia blossoms adorn the back garden, and I’m committed to celebrating their arrival. Cool weather in June stalled growth; I’ll be lucky to get more than one variety for bouquets this year. But just look at this blossom. So geometric, an ombré of color from pink to lavender to lemonade yellow.
We know our favorite things can’t last forever. Flowers, friendships, experiences full of meaning — they expand and contract in seasonal ways — which is of course to say gardening is like so many other tender things: beautiful, irregular, seasonal, and bright.
I’ve had to say goodbye to more friends this year than I care to think about. Job changes, life transitions, health concerns, a loss to cancer. Goodbyes require recalibration. I’m not great at finding a new rhythm when I’ve become accustomed to a certain kind of cadence. Celebrating as friends grow into new opportunities or mourning when they disappear into death seems a familiar skill-set now, one honed four times over just this year alone. I’m on that side of life, where loss is almost punctual — it sits too close, squeezed between the beginning of adulthood and this mid-life area.
A year of goodbyes has taught me this: I can create in memoriam, behold rituals to honor. Plant flowers in remembrance, write words to cheer well-lived lives, pull memories close on days of stillness and sadness. In the garden, I watch flowers cycle through seasons: emerge, blossom, then die back. When a heat wave crashes into thunderstorms, I watch out the back window, amazed and alert. Afterward, I scan the night for evidence of fireflies gathering in the rain-soaked yard. No glimpses of their glow, so I keep watch at dusk. What luck to be here in this moment.
One bonus picture from our recent stay in Colorado. I couldn’t help but include this image of a vast expanse from 12,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park as a counter to scenes from my sea-level garden.
See you again mid-month, when I share flower photos from the garden as part of a visual essay called Rewind.
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Writing is community, so let me know your thoughts about this month’s essay by leaving a comment.
-Betsy
Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing, Betsy!