![The Aster Path at Hayefield ~ October 2017 [Nancy J. Ondra/Hayefield.com]](https://i0.wp.com/hayefield.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/aster-path-at-hayefield-ondra-3.jpg?resize=537%2C358&ssl=1 "The Aster Path at Hayefield ~ October 2017 [Nancy J. Ondra/Hayefield.com]")
Hmmm…how best to sum up the last month in the garden? I keep coming back to the punchline of an old comedy sketch called “The End of the World”–the version with Peter Cook and Rowan Atkinson: “Well…it’s, uh, not quite the conflagration we’d been banking on. Never mind, lads; same time tomorrow. We must get a winner one day.”
Certainly, I don’t mean to be ungrateful: Many things are good. Very good. But I can’t help thinking that they’d be close to perfect if a particular plant had come into bloom just a few days earlier or stayed a few days longer, or that we’d have more fall color now if the last two weeks had been properly Octobery instead of August-like. And I don’t think that’s truly being whiny or hard to please; it’s just part of what makes gardening so interesting. I cherish those few moments each year when I look around and think “Wow, this is amazing.” But if they started happening too often, then there’d be nothing to left to do, and I’d have to find a new hobby. Fortunately, I don’t see that happening any time soon.