Gardening Chores Diminished

It's been weeks since I've felt compelled to go out daily into the garden to ensure that everything is in order. That fallen, blossom-heavy stems are properly staked to enable the flowers to be observed in their full splendour. That aged flower heads are dead-headed to encourage new blooms.

To make certain that nothing becomes too dessicated; too dry, necessitating that on full-sun days, or windy days the wonderful annuals we grow in garden pots are adequately hydrated.

Because it's now so much cooler, and summer is most definitely waning into fall, there is less of a requirement to water on an almost-daily basis. The garden, now confidently mature, has become capable of looking after itself, with a minimum of interference from me, its caretaker. Even weeding is far less of an ongoing duty. The garden has settled into its peaceful dotage. We've more leisure to just sit back and admire it. And we do.

Yesterday we watered all the pots in the front garden and the backyard. That takes at least an hour out of the gardening day. And it was time to do some vital cut-backs, of perennials that were well spent. Cutting back the tickseed, no longer in their long period of golden glory to give greater opportunity to the turtlehead patch close by. Faded and spent roses cut back; the miniature ones tend to retain their blooms; they slowly fade, while others fall, one petal at a time, to the ground below.

I've decided take some late-summer photographs of the garden, to download them to the computer so I can visit the garden from time to time throughout the winter when I begin to really miss its ever-changing, always-surprising presence. I see a large and colourful spider sitting exactly in the centre of its web that stretches from a patch of dinner-plate-size dahlia blooms to nearby equally large-bloomed zinnias.

The sun is hot and bright, and there is no angle I can attempt that will permit the camera's eye to adequately reflect the details of that complex little body. I must be satisfied with the glory of the garden's other inhabitants, captured for my later viewing delectation.