All in good time

Pulling out towering, still-flowering cosmos, taller than my head. Shaking the soil from the roots. Lopping dead flowers and seed-heads from a hundred different plants, tossing them into the garden bed to nestle and rest and seed to grow again another season.

Cutting away the dead and decomposing once-green things that had suffocated beneath the cosmos’ enthusiasm. Gently tending, trimming, clearing, watering, anything that had somehow survived in the floral dark. Training the climbing roses up and over fence and pole, and cutting back the potato-vine, inviting flowers.

Tending, training, trimming, trusting. It is a precursor to the big winter cut-back, settling the plants for rest and eventual rejuvenation. The autumn harvest, the garden clean, planting and sowing for fresh new blooms in spring.

And in life, the closing off of long-worked projects, the handing over of harvest, a preparation for hard-earned rest (learning to say no!) and hopes of new growth to begin again. All in good time.