“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

After the hot days of late and the high humidity during this summer, it is a welcome change to feel the touch of coolness in the air each morning. The Autumn season is here with the faintest sign of what’s to come and the beginnings of colour change in the trees. The breeze has a welcome coolness to it at times and the heady carefree days of summer are coming to an end. Our Northern Hemisphere friends eagerly await the first glimpse of Spring and we look towards the gorgeousness of Autumn- my favourite season.

Since New Year, I’ve been occupied with other things apart from the garden and have spent many hours driving and enjoying natural landscapes and other people’s gardens. I have missed hundreds of roses out in bloom at home and many photo opportunities that I only know occurred because of the masses of dried roses now, ready and waiting for me to deadhead.

This Autumn season holds for me a sense of a new beginning, perhaps because I’ve neglected the garden and hope to rectify my slack approach without going down the spiral of garden guilt. Gardens are not meant for guilt only pleasure.

Still, I can’t help but feel a little promiscuous from being so inattentive, and I wonder if there is such a thing as garden infidelity. For months, I’ve been musing upon other people’s greener vistas, with enticing tropical plants and the allure of shaded areas and stunning old trees. I am captivated by their beauty imagining a garden life in a climate and area different from our own.

Gardening is like everything else in life, you get out of it as much as you put in. No one can make a garden by buying a few packets of seeds or doing an afternoon’s weeding. You must love it, and then your love will be repaid a thousandfold, as every gardener knows.
Margery Fish

It is a a time of reckoning in early Autumn after the array of summer flowers die off and Autumn Joy and other Sedums deepen in colour, and late summer grasses wave in the wind. I look around the garden and lament the neglect and the abundance of weeds from spent perennials. The lawn has crept into the garden in my absence and many plants have been scorched from the intense late summer sun. As the cooler days become more frequent the roses will open once more for their final flush before winter. It will not be as spectacular as previous years without all the attention usually focused on deadheading and fertilising.

“The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.”
J L Carr

As I write, the roses in the garden at home are beginning to bud again, but there are very few to photograph. So today, I am highlighting the artist Alex Kelly from Birmingham, UK. Alex Kelly is an oil painter with an extraordinary ability to express floral beauty. See more on his website here.

Beauty abounds no matter where we are, and with or without one’s garden, there are always gifts from nature to inspire and stimulate us. Whilst away from our rural garden this summer, I’ve enjoyed the beauty of natural bushland, the open valleys and mountains, the beach and ocean and the jewel in the crown of Sydney Harbour. The remoteness of rural life was replaced with the company of family and friends, good times and water views.

Trees, old and majestic, shade-loving plants and ferns, are some of the high points of recent travels. I have a deepened sense of awe and appreciation for aged trees because I’ve visited areas lately where the lack of trees scorch the eye, and the landscape appears out of sorts with nature: bare, barren and far too hot. In these and any hot region, the shelter of a tree is a welcome embrace, providing an essential canopy of shade from the summer heat and is so arresting with the playful movement of foliage and light.

“Spring is beautiful, and summer is perfect for holidays, but autumn brings a longing to get away from the unreal things of life, out into the forest at night with a campfire and the rustling leaves.”
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster