We have been so busy lately, it seems, that we have temporarily given up our usual morning walk-about in the gardens, after breakfast.  This being Saturday, and no pressing business to attend to, the day stretching before us until our company arrives in the evening, we resumed our perambulations about our modest gardens.  Just to see what's happening on a broader scale than the usual glimpses we get, coming and going.

As usual, in late summer, many perennials are on the fading end of bloom and colour.  The two passion vines that I planted early in the summer, knowing their transitory life-span in this climate, but unable to resist the prospect of awaiting those wonderful blooms, turned out to be quite disappointing.  The vines themselves have grown vigorously enough, though not impressively, and their blossom output has been meager.

On the other hand, the appearance of echinacea, turtleheads, asters, phlox and Japanese anemones have gifted the garden with late colour.  And the begonia bulbs that I overwinter, along with the ipomea, have taken nicely as they unfailingly do, producing huge, gorgeous flower heads throughout the summer months that will continue well into fall.

Riley dogged us faithfully as we traipsed from the breakfast room out onto the deck, down the stairs to the back garden, through the garden fence alongside the house toward the front of the house and our front gardens.  Just as we're never bored looking through the gardens, so too is he never bored, following us, it seems.

There's work to be done in the gardens, there always is.  Weeding, thinning out, cutting back, splitting and re-planting.  It will all, over time, get done.  This quiet period of post-breakfast rambling is a time for the sweetness of appreciating what we've accomplished with nature's help.  The additional work can wait.