seeing through the haze of August

This is my one and only sunflower for the year. Chipmunks, apparently, ate all the other seeds I planted. (Deer polished off the lillies and peppers, and raccoons ate most of the tomatoes.) This one flower survived due to being in the midst of some perennials nothing chose to chew through. Despite it's amazing height, I found that the record height for a sunflower is 25 feet, so mine is a good fifteen feet shy of the record. Still, for the kind of neglect my flowers sometimes suffer, it's a pretty good sunflower.

Once again I have hit the point in the year when my gardens look all but abandoned. The heat and humidity and bugs were simply unbearable this year, as they are most years in late July and August in Indiana. It is every year at this time that I ask myself why on earth I continue to plant as many things as I do. And then it's another fall, another winter, another spring, and I find myself, once again, standing in a patch of fading zinnias and drooping sunflowers and three feet tall weeds in the withering heat of late summer. Because as much as I hate the heat and bugs of August, as much as the burnt leaves and spent flower heads remind me of the inevitability of winter, there are still glorious moments I experience in my garden. There are spring herbs and tender perennials that amaze me with the first green of the year. And early summer mornings of deliciously damp grass and blooms that are so brilliant they take my breath away. There are the days I can walk out my back door and pick enough herbs and vegetables to make a good pasta sauce. And once again, the following spring, August is forgiven.