September Nights and Days and Harvest Moons

An Indian Summer here at the moment - and a few days off during the week to enjoy the last warm and golden days before Brother Frost arrives. We've made a few excursions on those holi-days, which I'll share in other posts - but today we are at home, just basking in the sun, pottering in the garden (and having our flu and pneumonia jabs at the local GPs surgery  - Oooh, ouch, ow!! )

A Harvest Moon last night - shining brilliantly as it has done for the last few nights. No photographs of the full moon…but here are some Visitors to the Night Garden that called in midweek.

During the day - collecting seeds and cutting back…not too much, so that insects can overwinter amongst the dead foliage, but just removing leaves with mildew or signs of other problems. Seed heads can be beautiful to look at over winter, really adding to the interest in the otherwise empty garden - especially with a frost on them. Multiplying plants by collecting seed is one of my abiding pleasures, though - so I am shaking out heads and using old herb jars to store the seeds. Some to sow immediately - some for next spring.

And then there is the matter of bulb planting…!!

 

Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,

When the soft silver

Drips shimmering

Over the garden nights,

Death, the gray mocker,

Comes and whispers to you

As a beautiful friend

Who remembers.

 

Under the summer roses

When the flagrant crimson

Lurks in the dusk

Of the wild red leaves,

Love, with little hands,

Comes and touches you

With a thousand memories,

And asks you

Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Carl Sandberg - 1878-1967

 

Journal prompt - What (thousand?) memories do you have of the summer that is now nearly past?

Comments

[Evelyn Shobin]

Loved the night visitors!

[avis]

Lovely post and poem. I love seeing your night visitors! We are still enjoying our summer birds who will be leaving soon. Even the hummingbird migrants passing by will be gone soon.

[Diana PJ]

Here in the outskirts of Atlanta , Georgia in the US we are reaching October with temps in the mid 90's. Leaves are turning? or just dried out from lack of rain . When does the cool come? and rain? Several years ago , I visited Carl Sandburg's farm in North Carolina one autumn on a tour of the faux chateau built by George Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Caroline. That is an amazing place to visit and the closest we have to the splendors in Europe. But Sandburg's farm. While my other tour mates toured the home and his belongings, I sat in a field leaning against a fence post and then watched the farm animals and just breathed and day dreamed.