Ink & Penstemon

Is September over already? I haven’t even started canning the peaches. 

September is always so short and so full of digressions. Scraping and painting the porch railings, waxing the wood floors, getting the rain gutter replaced before the rain comes, cleaning the carpets, cleaning out the HVAC, and canning, and canning, and canning.

I hate September. I hate being the proverbial ant busily storing up against the winter with its nose to the ground, running. Even a well-scheduled ant will notice the signs of the changing seasons: the cooler air—rotate your clothes; the shorter days—set back your clocks; Costco putting out their holiday stock—freakishly start buying Christmas presents before Halloween. 

I hate being an ant. The world is too full of ants.

Being a grasshopper is the way to go. Grasshoppers jump into fall. They eat it up ravenously; strip it bare. Those lucky-jerk grasshoppers just blow off everything and go on vacation to enjoy the changing leaves in the mountains, to sit under the trees and marinate in that velvety sun of late September afternoons and proclaim “yes, ants of the world, I am busy!” And it is the best kind of busyness, you know. Bouncing around frenetically, trying to take it all in, because every time it is different and then it’s gone.

Sure, winter comes on fast and knocks your feet out from under you. That’s its job. Winter is cold. Winter is still. But autumn is quiet. If you don’t take time to listen, how else can you hear yourself think?

I hate being an ant. I want to be a grasshopper.

But the garden needs an ant right now. The Acer glabrum and accompanying ninebark, ‘Jacqueline du Pré’ rose, and cotoneaster are in, but the Rhus aromaticas ‘Gro-low’ need to be tucked in, as do the Penstemon venustus, and the oatgrasses. The veg garden needs to be put to bed for the winter, garlic needs to be planted. I need to finish the south borders. October’s arrival means that the deck will need to be torn out, and all the shrubs and forbs by the Alberta spruce will need to be transplanted somewhere as they are in the way of the great fir transplant slated for December. But where will I put them? And the spruce itself needs tearing out. I’m looking forward to that like I would look forward to a root canal, but it must be done.

And the bulbs! The bulbs! 

I have a few more days left in September, though. Maybe there’s still time to hop around.

Reminder: As with all MGRs, the photos for September are in the previous post as a photoset. Enjoy.