Can the band stay late tonight...?

I am feeling the bittersweet ache of late summer when cool evenings begin to brush alongside warm days. Too soon, my heart calls out, I need more time in the garden. Time to sit, to soak, to pretend it will always be like this.

A star of my late summer garden is the hosta, 'Royal Standard'. I have a pair of them framing a collection of white astilbe and goatsbeard, fronted with some rose daphne. I love their gleaming, corrugated, almost lime, foliage. However, unusual for a hosta, the real draw, for me, is the white, scented flowers.

The flowers are just coming into their own right now and hold sway with their fresh evening perfume

The funnel shaped flowers look like the skirts of long, white, hem-stitched cotton dresses

Elegant, demure, and just a little flirty, they lead the evening waltzes at the beachside dance halls in the old summer villages.

I'm not ready to hear the last song yet, so keep dancing girls, keep dancing.

The Richness of the Season

Just a quiet photo to capture that perfect zenith of the garden before it turns to gold. I do love the richness of August - back lane raspberries, dragonflies humming, the first blush on the apple trees that hang over the fences.

A fresh flush of flowers on my Morden Snow Beauty. Only this time it is not alone. Behind it is a Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' and the Spirea japonica 'Shirobana', a lovely spirea whose flowers start off dark pink and fade through varying shades of pink and white. These shrubs are part of a larger bed with repeated plantings of these and other shrubs as well as a few trees.

This is where we start to feel like it has been like this forever - only screen doors between us and the universe. Skirts and shorts, flowered blouses, sandals by the back door, hair swept up in a ponytail, and, in my case, a few new freckles across the nose. :)

I'll be mostly offline for the next little bit, so hoping you are enjoying the richness of the season.