I can scarcely believe that the garden season has come and gone.  Everything happened so fast.  One day the world was spring green and fresh as a dewdrop; I was sowing sunflower seeds and potting up dahlia tubers.  Now suddenly it's time to cut down the spent sunflowers and dig up the tubers for winter storage.  Well, I'm simply not having it.  Not yet.  I'm going to wallow in denial a bit longer.  I haven't mowed the grass in three weeks and there's nobody here but this chicken to care.  The giant castor bean plants that came down in a rainstorm can just lie there (have it your way).  I'm off the hook: checked-out, clocked-out, coasting in neutral.  Let's go back to the season that was.

In March I cut the privet hedge in the front garden right down to the ground.  I'm not talking pruning; I'm talking butchering.  The hedge, which framed the garden and formed a backdrop for a border of shrubs and perennials, had gotten fat at the top and bare at the bottom (not a pretty sight).  And it blocked sunlight and air from the perennials, causing them to grow in weakly and thinly.  I had grown the privet plants from rooted cuttings, and the resultant hedge was lovely and effective for years; it was hard to think of whacking it down so ruthlessly.  But whack it I did, and I have no regrets.  I felt like a maniac, wielding my razor-sharp saw.  But my radical off-with-their-heads approach worked: it gave the garden a more relaxed feeling, and the plump perennials grew in beautifully.  "Sing for your supper," I said.  And they did.

In my new garden, along the east side of the house, everything went wild and grew like a weed.  It was here that I grew the red castor bean plants (Ricinus 'Carmencita') from seeds sown in situ the third week in May.  I planted them, 24 in all, in a straight row, along the edge of my yard, to form a living wall between me and my neighbor's house.  They grew ten feet tall (at least), with thick reddish-brown stems and huge, jagged, palmate leaves.  In front of them I planted a border of maroon dahlias (Nuit d'Ete), green zinnas (Envy), dark blue salvia (Indigo Spires), and trailing nasturtiums to sprawl onto the pea gravel path.  Well, the whole show was like something out of I don't know what.  Disneyland, maybe.  But who cares?  I liked it.  Until I didn't.  One day in August the nasturtiums were smashed to smithereens in a hailstorm.  I jerked them out and threw them onto the compost pile.  They rooted.  Plants are astonishing.

Meanwhile, in the main garden, my Autumn Beauty sunflowers reached new heights.  They were stout, tall, and loaded with blossoms for weeks.  I planted double rows of them along two sides of the fence and added green-flowered tobacco (Nicotiana langsdorffii) to grow among them.  The inner beds were packed with tall Verbena bonariensis, fluffy Kochia scoparia, and trailing red coleus.  In the two front beds, beneath Korean lilac standards, my species daylilies (Hemerocallis citrina) bloomed madly in their second year.  In early spring I scattered arugula seeds among the emerging clumps of daylilies for an early salad crop.  Later, at the same moment the perennials lifted their lemon yellow blooms above the foliage, the arugula bolted and flowered in creamy white.  Perfection.

One of these days soon I'll get a blast of energy and throw myself into fall cleanup.  It's always satisfying, on a brisk and sunny October day, to have at it.  It'll be good to see the mess cleared away.  I'll sweep the dirt paths and pick out little weeds.  I'll freshen the water in the birdbath.  I'll relax in my comfy old chair and sip a glass of wine.  I won't even mind that summer came and went, lickety-split.  The garden will be stripped of its seasonal finery, and that'll be fine with me.  I'll soak up some autumn sunshine and let the garden tend me for a change.