That's very sweet. I am a contrarian though and at this point after working myself to death all spring and summer look forward to saying goodnight to my roses like little children after a long day.

Pam, I know what you mean, especially with the amount of roses you have to take care of. But what a beautiful garden you have to show for it.

Thanks. I also know what you mean, that nostalgic end of the beautiful season of roses. I love that poem too.

Here's my favorite. My mother loved this poem and I read it after her funeral. It also left an impression on my children when recited at a guinea pig funeral after we listened to Samuel Barber's 'Adagio". Not a dry eye in the house.

THE MELANCHOLY days have come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere;
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread;
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, 5
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours. 10
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the goldenrod, and the aster in the wood, 15
And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; 20
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 25
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

William Cullen Bryant, 1832

What I love about this time of year is that the rain returns after our long dry spring and summer in CA. In fact, it's raining today in Pacifica which is a bit early but very welcome.

Can't quite say goodnight to my roses yet as some will keep blooming for a few more months.

Diane

If only it had rained here enough to water my garden!

Here's a quote I like from THE PRIVATE WORLD OF TASHA TUDOR, p. 121. She lived in Vermont.

"Sometimes when I've been throwing hay around it smells like summer in the barn, and the sun comes through the windows and the cracks in the boards and makes shafts of light in the dusty air. But I never long for summer in winter. What is that lovely quote from Shakespeare - "At Christmas I no more desire a rose/Than wish a snow in May's newfangled mirth." That's the idea. For everything there is a season."