My flowers are grateful dead-heads and I find quiet joy in caring for them

Late August, 2011

It can be easy for impetuous gardeners to get discouraged in late summer, when we realize that our flowers have faded and our once-blooming beds are showing only dried stems and bare spots. In late August, I felt a pang of sadness when I looked out over my suddenly scruffy garden. The fragrant phlox blossoms had dried out in the relentless heat. Only a few petals still clung to the once-dramatic dark blue delphiniums. The roses were drooping, and even the spunky pansy plants had grown leggy and pale.

I knew it was time to give all my perennial flowers a thorough dead-heading. Over a weekend, I snipped off dead flowers to encourage more blooms, cut down some exhausted plants and thanked them for their months of color, pulled weeds, and removed dried leaves and spindly growth from the forget-me-nots and violas that border the flower beds.

I also spent time snipping 12 million dead blooms off the pansies I had planted in patio containers in May. I moved the containers next to the chair where I sit on the patio while Rags, our Old English sheepdog, eats breakfast and dinner. He will not eat unless I sit beside him, encouraging and praising him. Last week, while he nibbled away at his kibble, I dead-headed tiny pansy blossoms – and both of us were happy.

The front yard gardens look perkier now, just as many of us look more presentable after a long-delayed haircut. But after all the cutting-back and dead-heading, the beds’ new bare spots made me sad. I love looking out the kitchen window and seeing the flower gardens filled with blooms – a blowsy, exuberant splash of color.

I have grown flowers for many years. Because we lived on the West Side near Seattle, I was accustomed to buying plants throughout the summer. The mild temperatures all season made it easy to plant waves of perennials. Here in north Idaho, though, I locked myself down during the high heat of mid-July until nearly the end of August, and spent no money on plants. Putting in new flowers in 90-degree days, and expecting them to enjoy baking in the sun, seems mean-spirited.

Now that the calendar will turn to September, I want my flower garden to reflect the colors of autumn: russet, gold, pumpkin, and deep purple. (I have included deep purple in the fall color palette because our Idaho sky often turns to indigo after sunset.) So, after uncharacteristic self-restraint in July and August, I have bought some perennials for my September gardens. I’ve added more monarda, and phlox to fill the bare spots where I dead-headed all the spent blooms and cut down the perennials whose flowering season is over for the year.

I also bought plants to christen the wonderful five-tiered garden box my husband built in our side yard. Purple penstemon and stokesia, orange and gold rudbeckia, and trailing lavender bellflowers will mix with autumn chrysanthemums and pansies there. If I can find an autumn shade of miniature rosebush, I will plant one for drama in the box’s top tier.

Dead-heading the flowers, planting the new bed, hand-watering the garden, refilling the bird bath and the feeders – all bring me a quiet joy. Taking care of living things can be a sacred trust. As I work on my knees, using delicate kitchen scissors on the plants, I remember the fragility of nature, as well as its astonishing power to heal, to inspire, and to offer beauty. Those hours in acts of caretaking remind me why I not only love gardening, but why I need it in my life.