The garden relaxes

The central back garden, Corylus "Red Majestic" in front

I wanted to use the word "blowsy" to describe my garden now, but it has too many pejorative meanings in the dictionary. I don't want to insult my garden, just because its display has peaked for this summer and it's a little unkempt. I think whoever gave the word those meanings spent too much time reading dime novels about "fallen" women. But I love the word for its meanings of "untidy in appearance, frazzled, scrubby, bedraggled, unstylish".

My garden is all of the above, and there's no part of it I don't love. The spent and faded flowers, the ripening fruits, the overgrown enthusiasts, the sagging branches, the toasty scars of this summer's dry wind, the floppiness of almost everything, the scraggy hopefulness of the new transplants and the ones I moved too late for their liking—they're all beautiful, in a forgiving, make-the-best-of-it way. My garden is relaxing, as I am. It's worked hard this year, rooting, branching, blooming. It deserves to let its hair down now, to look a little frumpy, to take a nap before it's time to dress up for fall.

The sun, too, seems to be taking it easier. It's still hot—plenty hot—but it gets up later, doesn't get as high in the sky, no longer hitting all the places it reached a month ago. And me? I get up with the sun, sort of, and I'm winding down, definitely. Besides, I don't work if the temp is over 70 unless I really must. My days right now are full of painting and watering, waiting for it to cool off again before I finish the planting and start transplanting the trees I want to move, and digging up the shrubs that I know now are going to get too big for where I put them.

The plants and I, we're waiting for the rains, hoping they come while it's still warm, hoping they come gently and friendly-like, and not with fierce winds and soggy, spitting cold. The season changes here can take a month, or they can take a day. All we know is that winter will come, whether we have a fall or not. And when the summer has been this gorgeous, this delightful, it seems greedy to ask for a wonderful fall on top of it. We can secretly hope, though.