About composerinthegarden

A composer by vocation, a gardener by avocation. My garden and my life as a composer are deeply intertwined - the yin and yang of my creative life. . .

The August garden – imperfectly perfect

Posted on September 6, 2025 by composerinthegarden

The garden in late summer is an odd contradiction of flowers swarmed by feasting pollinators Bumblebees on Echinacea and plants, having fulfilled their seasonal life cycle, now tipping into senescence. Dead leaf caught in grass inflorescence

There is no stopping this process – it is life in the garden and the world, the dynamic of change and imperfection.

One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. . . Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
~ Stephen Hawking

Without the cycle of organic death and decay, the moss and mushrooms would have no place to grow and thrive.

Mushrooms growing on a mossy log

Tucked in the brown stems of a native iris that bloomed in May, a spider web is strung with drops of rain like a miniature Indra’s Net in the garden.

Long gone is the youthful beauty of June and July, when everything was fresh and colorful. But every day I treasure the richness and wildness of late summer, the garden overflowing with abundance.

The lines of the paths and arches are now blurred by plants freely growing past their boundaries.

Late blooming perennials like the hardy begonia promise fresh new flowers, Hardy begonia buds

while an annual amaranth drapes to the ground with a full season’s worth of bloom. Amaranth flowers

Late summer, more than any other time in the year, contains that full circle of seasons, a crescendo of life well-lived, the ebb and flow of a garden in all its imperfectly perfect beauty. Enjoy this stroll through the garden buzzing with life in August.

I wish you joy in the inherent wildness underlying this season of abundance, growth, and change.

The color of summer

Posted on August 17, 2025 by composerinthegarden

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. ~Joan Miró

The garden was lush and green in July and overflowing with colorful plants. Cool foggy mornings are a special joy, wrapping the garden in quiet. They create rich moments of saturated color that enspell me and often make me late for appointments, as I cannot bear to leave such a gift of beauty.

Color fills my sight at every step through the garden and I revel in it. Miró was right about color and music and poetry. Tone poems are the stuff of musical artistry and if I get it right, the whole garden becomes a tone poem, an artistic romance realized in the color and texture and juxtaposition of plants. And the fireflies add an extra magical note. Here’s a cinematic look at the garden in July, beginning with flowers and ending with fireflies.

Of course, poems and paintings and written music don’t really change over time, but the garden certainly does. It is more like a dance than a painting, perhaps starting awkwardly like a preadolescent but then coming into its own moment of time. I am constantly amazed how it can change overnight – new color, shifting light, some plants finishing their solos while others step forward.

Copper corner

Daylily ‘El Desperado’

Daylily ‘Persian Ruby’

The sounds of summer have changed as well. The birds are done raising their broods and their songs have given way to the constant hum of cicadas during the August days and the pulsing rhythms of katydids at night. The katydid songs in my midnight woods are captured in the audio clip below.

I’ve been spending mornings on my upper deck lately. As the larger gardens gather their strength after a late summer haircut, I find joy in the color that is more constant in this little retreat tucked among the treetops. The winged ones find their way to this garden in the sky and the cherry tomatoes that thrive there are a delicious surprise at happy hour.

In spite of heat, drought, wild thunderstorms, and fog, this summer’s garden has been a joyful place to be. How is summer treating you?

A peaceful woodland garden

Posted on August 8, 2025 by composerinthegarden

There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~Minnie Aumonier

It was only last year that I created my woodland garden yet it is the first place where Pixie and I walk at dawn . . .and the last place where we linger at dusk. The quiet green heart of it draws us in many times a day to meander and explore. The cool shade of the woods has become a refreshing place to escape the intense heat of the sun at midday. Woodland walk after rain

There are so many details to notice, like the red croziers of a lady fern

and the green and black pinwheels of the maidenhair ferns.

Weeks of heavy rains and hot weather triggered lush growth in this young garden, making it look mature beyond its years.

A sturdy copper birdbath added in June has become a centerpiece to the ferns and sedges that flow around it while its water reflects the trees above. All of the plants in this woodland garden are native to our southwest Pennsylvania area, giving me a challenge and an opportunity to play with form, texture and multiple shades of green in an eco-friendly setting.

We moved here over twenty years ago because of the tall trees that surrounded the house – creating a garden at their feet has made them even more treasured. This short video is an effort to capture the atmosphere and beauty that this little woodland garden offers.

I wish you a peaceful place in which to relax and reflect in quiet moments, and if you are a gardener, encouragement to plant a tree and play in its shade.

Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

Silver and gold

Posted on August 6, 2025 by composerinthegarden

I’m celebrating! I’ve been a member of Garden Communicators International (GardenComm) for many years – they are an excellent organization that offers multiple opportunities for professional development. A few years ago, I joined a GardenComm Power Circle – a working group of colleagues that helps strengthen skills in various areas, in this case, for filming and editing videos. After several months in the Power Circle, I made a garden video from footage shot in my garden that I had prepared for a group session. When I uploaded it to YouTube, I quickly got over 24,000 views, which was shocking to me, but it encouraged me to make more garden videos and improve my craft. Here’s that early video:

This year was the first time I entered two of my garden videos in GardenComm’s 2025 Laurel Awards competition in the Digital Media: Video category. I was thrilled to find out that both of my videos were chosen for Silver Laurel Media Awards!

Silver Laurel winners are then considered for a single Gold Laurel award in each category. I attended the awards banquet in July and to my shock and delight, one of my videos won the Gold! It was such an unexpected honor and I am spurred on to explore new ideas and new techniques for future garden videos. I am also attempting to keep my garden “video ready” for those perfect video moments and of course, keep Pixie by my side, as she is the real star of the show.

Here is the Gold Laurel winner:

And here is the Silver Laurel winner:

For all of you who follow me on this blog, I thank you so much for your kind words, friendship, and support over the years.

The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it. ~Hubert H. Humphrey

Playing with color

Posted on July 6, 2025 by composerinthegarden

The garden is moving into its most colorful time of the growing season. Daylilies and Echinacea have come into bloom, tall lilies release their fragrance into the air on warm days and, even at twilight, the white Hydrangea flowers make a bright statement in the circle garden.

One of my favorite garden areas is the Grape and Lemonade bed, where all of the flowers are purple and lemon yellow. I’ve been wanting to paint a flower pot in those colors to place in the bed in order to amp up the color and finally had the time to do it. I’ve always been inspired by artist and gardener Keeyla Meadows for the way that she paints large garden pots and then plants them in the same color palette. You can see some of her work here or visit her on Instagram @keeylameadows.

While I’m not nearly as adventurous as she is, this is my first attempt at painting and planting a pot to echo a color theme.

Painted and planted!

Old pot

Partially painted pot

And here it is in the garden – even from far away, the rim of the pot stands out and will add color until the end of the garden season.

I created a short video of the Grape and Lemonade bed and how I painted the pot, which I consider a small gift to a pretty part of the garden. It is the first video in a series I’m starting on my YouTube channel called “Spotlight in the Garden”. Enjoy!

I hope you are enjoying floral fireworks at the height of summer, and if you are lucky, an evening show of fireflies.

composerinthegarden

Gardening in harmony with nature

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