October Flowers

This is the time of year when I love the gardens the most. First of all, the expectations are low. No one is expecting the gardens to be fabulous. Everything that is dead is easily forgiven, and usually quite beautiful with its dried out stalk and seed head, and only occasionally offensively mushy and rotten or something. But no one is expecting flowers. And so the lush flowers of late October are much more appreciated now then they ever would be in high summer. Nastursiums are peaking. Never have they looked better, in the cool crisp air, dry, pristine, and unencumbered- exactly right for this time of year. And when I see them entangled in evergreens, traveling inwards and emerging through gaps and spilling flowers forth, I am brought back to England, specifically to Beth Chatto's when I fell in love with the red Tropaeolum speciosa scrambling through a weighty evergreen tree. At least that's how I remember it.