My garden is a living testimony to the month of August. The extremely hot temperatures make weeding not as fun as it was at the beginning of the summer. The messiness began with the cleomes taking over, the knowledge that their seeds will abundantly fall to make next year's production in my garden even more intrusive stirs me to keep a heavy hand on pulling them up. The monarda, while it brought such lovely visitors of hummingbirds, has a reputation of spreading far and wide creating a canopy over the lower lying herbs and stunting their growth. Yesterday, I spent a brief bit of the morning, making the herb garden tidy. Now my uncovered parsley can flourish, allowing the swallowtail butterflies to stop by and lay their minuscule eggs. Very soon I will seek for the munching caterpillars during the still hot days of September to watch them grow plump in preparation to cocoon themselves for the cycle to continue.
And we can not forego grieving the passing on of summer. Every year, the story repeats itself. My heels are dug in. Maybe I should consider weeding these thoughts too and move on.
