Mums and asters added, to brighten the incoming autumn garden. I never used to like mums, because the yellow ones were already so close to brown, and I found them unutterably sad. But then I learned about white and pink mums, and blue and purple asters. When you mix those together with dahlia, autumn sedum, and the last of the phlox, bachelor’s buttons, and coneflowers, it’s a pleasant palette, and edges our sidewalk quite cheerfully.
It’s a messy time in the garden, and I have no time to neaten everything up — but it’s okay, it’s okay. Autumn is messy by its nature, a time for small, unexpected brightnesses, as almost everything in nature begins its inevitable fade to brown and black. (Although speaking of which, I really would like to find some nice red twig dogwood; time to start thinking ahead to the winter garden.)
