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.

Our Sundays had a break – but the garden kept going meanwhile. I did some fun things on my Sundays with new and old friends. It felt so good to be away.

Soon enough, the flowers are going to take a rest, and I might do that, too. I’m tired, friends, truly. All the reasons why I need to keep doing this – making pictures – those reasons don’t take into account the cutting and schlepping and sweeping and so much washing up that goes along with standing flowers in water.

Our folks used to say, “bone tired,” and I know a lot of people who fit that description. Resting is kind of becoming an issue in the larger world, and I am happy to be on that cutting edge. Exactly what the Phone Cloud is doing to my dopamine supply may not be settled scientifically yet, but I firmly believe that one day research will prove that its infinite appetite for my brain-juice literally makes grocery shopping almost impossible.

We are not an infinite scroll, my darlings – anymore than the flowers bloom infinitely. But they come back when their season returns. And so will we.

See that simple white dahlia in the center?  She was hiding in the dark forest of cosmo trunks and rambling snapdragon stems, along the crowded side of the row, where it’s hard to water. “Treasure!” I called out when I saw her as I was trying to wind the hose behind the cosmos.  Such a clean, refined form and pure color from a dahlia seedling – it’s pretty special.

But so is the lovely sunset pink dahlia to her left, or the curled cactus form painted in red and yellow, standing tall in the back.  And the lush, glowing yellow puffs, nestled in the middle row, that have bloomed and bloomed since early July.

And the ruffles of white and pink lisianthus – even dark plum lisianthus – and the pale yellow cosmos and very nearly the end of the shell pink asters.

It doesn’t matter that there are more to cut than I can possibly finish arranging.  Each one is treasure, calling out to her lovely companions, her bees and dragonflies, her impatient and plodding gardener, “Here I am! Come find me!  Your treasure is everywhere!”

I cut as many blooms as I could on Saturday, since September is starting out with temperatures in the 90s.  The second flush of lisianthus and abundance of asters delighted me yet again.  The seed-grown dahlias are perfect misfits, with tangled petals and irregular colors so unlike the symmetrical cosmos and lisianthus.  I think gardeners must love surprises – and a tentative hope for the beautiful unknown is certainly one of the greatest treasures I’ve found in the dirt.

It was my dad’s birthday on Friday.  He would have been 99.  So often, Marv could not set aside the flaws that troubled him about me – my worry, my insecurity, my hope for some kind of achievement.  His disapproval fixed those traits like lead in my boots until very recently, now that it is truly too late for that liberation to change anything but my own self-sovereignty.

But it meant everything to me when he recognized the energy of line and form on a large canvas I was working on for a figure painting class, when I went back to school at 30 to finish my degree.

“Her knee’s not quite right,”  I said.  He thought for a moment, taking in the uncensored strokes of green and crimson that defined the reclining model, viewed from the back.  “Yes,” he carefully agreed. “But it doesn’t matter.  The gesture is there.  That’s what counts.”

The heat was bad, but it didn’t last.  Like so many things, it was a mixed blessing.  The intense temperatures pushed more buds to open – and it didn’t take long for the flowers to perk back up in the cool nights that followed.  Snapdragons are sending up their spires again, and the Apricotta cosmos are suddenly flush with warm pink blooms.  How can I choose between the delights of lisianthus in their second flush of rosebud blossoms, and the ravishing abundance of asters, widening their infinity of petals at a blush?

Over lunch my friend was telling me that her studio’s building is for sale.  I asked her if she was making plans to find another place ahead of time.  She said, “You know – I have my dream studio there.  I decided just to enjoy it right now, for as long as I can.”

Every day, I ask myself if I can do just that – enjoy this for right now, for as long as I can – in the face of everything that will inevitably change or be lost.  I won’t always have this garden, or these huge windows, or nights that whisk away the too-hot days and reset us all to a more agreeable temper.  Or most importantly the nearest and dearest voices, who know where we all started and how we came to arrive right here.  Can I absorb this ordinary sense of how much good still supports me, even in my aches and pains and quandaries (of which I continue to have an abundance).

So often, the answer our culture offers is to do something about that feeling – keep pushing toward a larger goal – passion or money – as if there must be some point to feeling good beyond the simple experience.  But how much more can there be, truly – than to say we decided to just enjoy things right now, for as long as we can?

Let me tell you about the garden this week (like I always do).

We’ve had some genuinely lovely weather for the past week or so, plus measurable rain.  In the paradise of full sun and a little extra water, the cosmos seized their moment.  It’s a riddle how something so feathery and delicate can be so damn tough.  The zinnias have put on thick moptops in raspberry or magenta or orange, while others are satisfied with their single corona of petals around a center of fluffy stamens.  Some of the dahlia seedlings are just starting to bloom, each one a surprise if not a treasure.  I dug out the achillea (yarrow) because it’s too spread-y for my limited space.  Bye-bye potential troublemaker.

And then there’s the asters – Janina Salmon.  I admit I thought they were mums, but I stand delightfully corrected.  I sowed the seed on April 8.  Four months doesn’t seem like too long to wait for all these petals, does it?  The plants themselves are mighty pretty – bushy with long arms, each topped with a concentration of green and petals, ripening.

Now, we’ll see what happens.  I watered for over 2 hours on Saturday to try to help them get ready for the heatwave that settled in today. Soaking the roots with the hose right along the ground, moving it just a few inches at a time, I gave the whole 100 square feet the longest drink I could manage.

It’s not supposed to 99 degrees in Wisconsin.  Ever.  Except we’ll hit that this week.  I bet the cosmos can handle it.

These flowers don’t really go together – am I right?  I didn’t plant them on purpose color-wise.  They are mostly mixes – you get whatever is in the seed packet.  That includes the dahlias from seed – red single pointed stars, pink imperfect curls, rows of glowing butter cream petals.  I don’t necessarily like orange, for instance – and yet there is a lot of it here, and back in the garden.

And you?  Have you carefully chosen all the pieces of your life for the most flattering colors and complementary forms?  Or did you make up your mind that you would grow whatever the seed packet offered – and celebrate the beauty where you find it?

Flowers from friends are double lovely, and I used every single stem we picked from the zinnia hedge running along the deck – me, my friend and her delightful sister (who had stories of dairy turned apple farmers and Chicagoans turned Wisconsin organic growers).  The strings of garden lights came on as the twilight settled, warm and welcoming as the company had been.

Zinnias don’t ask much – not even much time.  Remember, I planted an extra patch along the outside of my garden?  The seed packet said 45 days – and it did not lie.  They put up their little green leaves, and I helped them get taller by pinching out the first buds.  And now – well, you just have to marvel at where all those petals came from, in colors that would make any sunset blush.

The tomatoes are in the dahlias.  The tomatoes are in the snapdragons.  The tomatoes are in the cosmos.  (They have not yet reached the sunflowers – and believe me when I say I am not going to let that happen.)

It started out innocently enough, as these things do.  The tag on the garden center 6-pack said “Container – Determinate” – and something about 65 days.  That’s all I wanted.  A few nice, contained, determined cherry tomato.

Lies – all lies.  These creeping giants passed “Container – Determinate” about 4 feet ago.  I swear I hear them laughing at my feeble twine-and-stake attempts to restrain them.  “Foolish human!”  they chuckle as they crawl another foot or two between the stems and leaves of the plants next door.  “We’re tomatoes!  This is what we do!”

Meanwhile:  the luminous dahlia, the fragrant yarrow, the dance of the cosmos.  All from seed planted this spring.  Forgive me for such a short and silly post tonight.  I got started late – and anyway what can I say that the cosmos don’t already tell?

Hydrangea season is long and generous, unlike the fly-by-night progression of lilacs, peonies and roses that take their sweet time getting here, and vamoose just when we’ve fallen completely in love.

To be fair, in this part of the world, hydrangea and viburnum both decorate the summer in fat snowballs of one zillion tiny flowers, and thick green leaves – and you have to know something to tell the two apart while they are blooming. (Which, by the way, I do not. Know anything. But we are clear on that.)

Eventually, the viburnums’ snowballs melt away, revealing their true identity in berries ranging from glossy currant-red to deep matte purple. Hydrangeas’ flowers turn instead to parchment right where they bloomed, aging to green or rose or buff through the last days of autumn. Then snow piles up on the shivering dried flower heads, clinging in cascades and crevices that outline their dense petals. This friendly habit of being beautiful for 9 or 10 months of the year would be reason enough for our grandmother’s to love hydrangea (and they did). But also, some hydrangeas grow flower heads as big as small melons – and who doesn’t love a giant flower?

I have no hydrangea of my own, but my friend from work made sure I got some from the long, dense planting that follows the side of his house, leading back to the raspberry patch. His grandmother taught him to grow raspberries and hydrangeas – and she did a good job. He brought in glorious 2-foot stems, grand enough for a show-stopping centerpiece in the swankest hotel lobby. I noticed the slightest scent – barely sweet, like old Ponds cold cream – as I stood them in a wastebasket of water for a fresh drink, out of the way by the coat rack. “It smells just like a flower shop over there,” he said. And it did.

I thought his grandmother might like something a little closer to home than that grand hotel lobby. An old teapot on the table, full of creamy white snowballs, and lace-petalled stars, gathered freely from the rough edge of the field, out past the yard, where nature follows her own devices.