Walking around the pond
When every flower, weed and frond
Is in full beauty
As if by duty
To show off the last of their blooming.
It is a bittersweet time; we have been enjoying all the flowers, warm sun and all the garden produce for months now. Fall is on its way. Oh, there will be more hot days and warm breezes, but at night you can feel the oncoming change.
As if to have one last hurrah, the foliage around the pond breaks out its last spectacular glory. There are the tiny orange jewel weed flowers; just touch one of the seed pods and the seed pops out to make future jewel weed. The milkweed pods are full of satiny white fluff; blow on them and one by one, their delicate floss with a tiny brown seed at its bottom drifts off to land in other places to make more milkweed.
It was Mom who taught me how to make the jewel weed seeds pop. It was Ba, my grandmother, who showed me how the milkweed reseeds itself each year. We used to break off wands of the fluffy stuff and run with them to scatter the seeds and watch them float on the breeze.
Jewel Weed (from http://www.bio.brandeis.edu)
Milkweed (from http://www.bio.brandeis.edu)
Even though Winter is coming up behind Fall, this is a glorious time. My favorite place to watch the changes are around that pond. Yesterday, the last day of August, there were ducks on the water, and a beautiful blue heron was standing patiently in the reeds, waiting for his lunch to swim by.
The rambling roses have dropped their creamy white and pink petals, and now sport their orange-y red rose hips.
From Flower Talk blogger.
Gorgeous purple lupine are everywhere.
Lupines (photography from Snakeroot Farm).
And then there are one of my favorites; Queen Ann’s Lace. They always looked like fairy parasols to me.
Photo by Jordan Meeter
There are more flowers of course, but these are my favorites. Instead of mourning the last of Summer, let’s take the time to appreciate all the particular splendor that Fall brings. If you let it, it will soften the thought of the oncoming Winter. It, too, has its own glorious beauty.
But for now, let’s enjoy the gaudy and glamorous parade of the coming Fall!