September bounty

So much to pick! It is pretty late in the year and we're approaching the end of our flower-picking season, but in the last couple of weeks the garden seems to have surged up with a great wave of flowery bounty for us to pick, and we have been picking so much, and then looking back at the garden, and it still looks full of flowers... The welcome sunshine we've been having has resulted in a proliferation of dahlias, and all the half hardy annuals - coreopsis, snapdragons, amaranthus, tagetes, cosmos, zinnias - which were planted out in a rush at the beginning of summer are now outdoing themselves in their colourful display. It reminds me that it is worthwhile to make the effort to carry out certain tasks (jam making, potting up bulbs for Christmas) which seem tedious at the time but which reap rewards at a later date. Right now in the Flower Garden, these jobs are: planting narcissi in trenches, sowing seeds of hardy annuals, collecting and saving seed from favourite flowers, and harvesting things to dry for winter decoration. Also very important is for us to take the time to stop and look around at the beautiful garden - which is also extremely busy with fascinating insects at this time of year - and to drink in the magic of it all.