I spent most of the day gardening in the East Bay, but this time of year what needed doing was not so much gardening as janitorial maintenance. Cosmos and bachelor buttons, daisies and iris had all passed well beyond their summer peaks. The plants were big and rangy and spilling out of their borders with few or no flowers left. What most of them needed was to be cut back to the ground and that was mostly what I occupied myself in doing. The roses themselves will hang on through the rest of the autumn, blooming hesitantly. The only thing the rose bushes required at this point was the usual routine haircut to help maintain their shapes. Above, a late-season group of pale blossoms brought indoors.
The general decline was by no means universal, however. Certain parts of the garden flourished quite as if this were springtime, and I think especially of the fresh and delicate pink flowers seen here tying to hide behind stands of new-grown juicy dark-green calla lily leaves and broad flat circular nasturtium leaves.