The Longed For Date Has Arrived ...

Finally, it's October 1st and in a cruel twist of fate, it's warmer and more humid on my corner of Katy than it has been in days. Mother Nature is toying with me ... it would be very easy to sag into a chair in the air-conditioned comfort of my home and ponder downheartedly the vagaries of the real SWMBO. (As noted in her post last week, the Head Gardener is fond of referring to me as She Who Must Be Obeyed.) However, I am preparing myself to soldier on, chin up and shoulders back, mindful that October 1st is NOT the date on which the weather magically changes from summer to fall but merely a personal benchmark, a reminder that fall will indeed come again.

While I wait, not necessarily patiently, for weather in which it's actually a pleasure to garden, I'll catch up on the myriad chores that need doing on MCOK. Thanks to fairly regular rainfall while I was away at the Garden Writers' symposium, there's an abundance of new growth in the gardens. The Head Gardener is not pleased with the ratio of weeds to desirable plants, however, and is muttering dire imprecations against the interlopers. They are not long for this world.

A brief word re GWA before I head outside for the day: it was an exhilarating and overwhelming experience and I hope to offer some observations when I've had some time to reflect on it all. I came home with new friendships formed and lessons learned, as well as with a dizzying array of PLANTS! At top you see them as they were when I first unpacked them ... below is a picture of them, repotted and adjusting to culture shock. I'll get them into the ground in the next couple of weeks, I hope.

"The difference between a plant in a pot and a plant in the soil
is the difference between a man in a hotel and a man in his own home."
-Beverley Nichols, Rhapsody in Green