I had a cold (not the Vid) all week, but I felt good enough yesterday to spend the morning cutting the (almost) last stems.  The bees slept in like I did, hiding from the chilly temperatures until there was enough sunshine to remind them there was still some work to do. One of the bees came home with me, dozing in a flower.  I waited until he fell asleep again, and then scooped him back outside before he knew it.

This cosmo volunteered between the cement blocks that support one of the water barrels near my garden plot. I nursed it through the drought, curious to see what the flowers would be.  Despite cracks in its thick stem, it kept growing, covered with fern-like leaves.  But while all the other cosmos were covered with buds and blossoms, it did not put out a single bloom.  I had resigned myself to the possibility that she might never flower.

This week, though, she unfurled all at once, finally showing her sea-shell shaped petals, raspberry inside and silver pink on the reverse.  It was breath taking to see her at the end of the row, leaning into the autumn breeze on her maiden voyage.

Why did she wait so long?  She had all the water and sun, exactly the same as I gave the other flowers.  She germinated the same time they did, more or less – and yet she needed so much more time to reach her goal.

A beautiful surprise, one last note of grace from the season of growing, even as the bees begin their deeper dreaming and we all draw inward for the longer nights to come.