One golden day redeems a weary year. ~Celia Thaxter
It’s not often that turning the calendar page corresponds to a change in the garden. This August, the page and the garden turned in sync. Mild days and cool nights have ushered in a subtle change and earth’s spin towards the equinox has pulled the sun lower in the sky. Most of the July bloomers like daylilies have finished their show and the bloom palette has shifted to golden Rudbeckias and cherry red Echinaceas. Bees and butterflies abound, greedy for the late summer bounty, and the cicadas and tree frogs have begun their August serenade. In anticipation of autumn, the weeping cherry in the center of the garden has begun to turn into a golden fountain of foliage – perhaps it is just trying to compete with the golden flowers circling around it. In another month or two, the woods surrounding the garden will glow in autumn colors. For now, though, there is just a hint of the golden days to come.
Enjoy a few scenes from the garden as it shifts to gold, a fitting celebration of my 100th blog post as Composer in the Garden. (Click on any photo to begin the slideshow. All photos ©2014 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved)
The golden age is before us, not behind us. ~Shakespeare
For a different kind of gold in the garden, visit Ogee’s wonderful blog Gardens for Goldens.
composerinthegarden 
Firstly congratulations with your 100th post. It’s a beautiful post about the changing of seasons that we are about to see, at least in some parts of the world. I am a little amazed about how many flowers you still have in your garden. They are all captured so beautifully in these photos.
Thanks, Otto, for your comments and for stopping by. The garden will continue blooming through the first hard frost (probably in October). In the meantime, the bees and butterflies are enjoying the abundant flowers that are still making a show.
The amazing care in your garden is so felt in these photos. Beautiful!
Thank you, Mimo. I was delighted to see your photos again – you are always an inspiration to me.
Thanks for the photo journey into your botanical sanctum. … and congrats on #100 … that number surprises me because I would have thought higher … then again, that may mean I joined the journey early. 🙂
Glad you enjoyed the tour, Frank – I love that phrase “botanical sanctum” 🙂 The blog will be 3 years old later this month, so if I had kept up with weekly blogging, this would probably have been my 150th. A few pauses and a drop to bi-weekly posts have changed the stats but have also kept me blogging.
And you can steal the phrase (botanical sanctum) …. coincidentally … I have blog anniversary later this month as well.
Congratulations on the 100th! Gorgeous pictures as usual; I also noticed a few red leaves on the maples (but we like to keep it secret for a while 😉
Thanks, diversifolius; glad you stopped by. The occasional red leaf is showing up here too, especially on the oak leaf hydrangeas. It’s like that first gray hair; just a few here and there, then . . .
🙂
I haven’t heard of weeping cherry, but a first glance at those yellowing leaves made me think they were poison ivy. For your sake I’m glad they aren’t, or you might have reason to weep.
Unfortunately, I do have poison ivy in the woods, and am making inroads on removing it – very stressful! The tree is a Japanese weeping cherry, Prunus ‘Snow Fountain’ – they are very common here and this one seems to be quite happy in its spot.
You’re good at many things – your sense of the groundedness is expressed over and over, even in wonderful lines like the earth’s spin towards the equinox has pulled the sun lower in the sky – wow, that sings! Beautiful, that golden time. I’m glad you posted more from the garden.
Lynn, thank you for so many kind comments, here and on the photos. I’ve devoted this summer to the garden, through all of the construction and in reworking many of the beds. It feels good to spend so much time in it; I tend to be far more reflective and have more to share as a result. It is a grounding experience, as you noted – the rewards of gardening are certainly many layered!
Hints of “that time of year” are present. I have noticed that the few trees around here (i.e. northern Illinois) that have historically (and inexplicably) started to turn in August haven’t shown any sign of doing so yet. I wonder if that’s a function of the very late spring, the quite wet spring and early summer, some combination of the two or something else entirely.
In any case….another wonderful collection of garden images and congratulations on your 100th post, Lynn!
Hi Kerry and thanks. As far as the trees turning leaf color, it seems to me to be a function of the temps and rainfall of summer. We had a warm, then bitterly cold winter, followed by a late spring with reduced flowering from winter bitten shrubs and trees. By July, everything seemed to be blooming on time but the very cool nights and mild days of late July seem to have triggered an autumn reaction – it even smells like autumn here, according to my non-gardening but astute husband.
The 100th post snuck up on me; I wasn’t paying attention, so it was serendipity to combine gold and 100 in one post 🙂 As always, thank you for your kind and thoughtful comments.
It is true almost everything in the garden suddenly turns golden. It is as if the plants are holding on to the last bits of summers sun before it’s gone.
Carol, that is a beautifully poetic way to describe it, and I think you are exactly right! Thanks for stopping by and leaving such a lovely comment.
100 golden posts as well. Happy century mark as you turn the page to early fall.
Thanks, Audrey – you came to mind immediately, of course!
Golden days indeed. A lovely album.
Thank you, Tootlepedal!
I managed to get the garden turned for the first time this year. Hoping for some salad greens and winter veggies, and if very lucky some beans before the ground freezes! It will be an interesting mix of harvest and new growth this season for me then.
Elisa, thank you for stopping by and commenting! Now is the perfect time for planting salad greens; I’m getting ready to harvest mine and start a new crop and I just started a few flats of zinnias to fill in around the perennials that have gone over. Gardeners are always the optimists!
Thanks! I have Zinnia seeds and was wondering if they would ‘work’ this late 🙂
Oh yes, they germinate in 2 or 3 days and will love growing in the heat of summer. Nothing left to lose to try!
Yes, the season begins to shift. Just yesterday I noticed that our burning bush had developed at tinge of red on some of the outer leaves. Great pictures in this post. I love the pale pink of the phlox you show. Our numerous specimens of phlox range from purple to white with a variety of pink hues but none quite so subtle as the one in your picture. 🙂
JIm, thanks for your comments. I’m starting to get red leaves on the hydrangeas as well. I love that pink phlox – a chance seedling from the light lavender of Phlox paniculata ‘Schubert’ and the white of p. ‘David’. I’ve been transplanting those seedlings to new places in the garden over the past few years, but you are right, it is unusual to get a delicate pink instead of the reversion to bright magenta!