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Ah, the Asters of it All

© Barbara Hall

I do LOVE September. Always have. While I can resist the urge to buy new shoes, I can rarely resist the urge to buy new pens and notebooks whether I need them or not.

Although I'm not the biggest bulb-buyer the universe has ever seen, it's REAL hard to pass up a good mum....I got one this year called 'Cognac'. What a wow. Not QUITE as tight as a true 'button' mum, but certainly not as floozy as the classic mums. I guess it's a neat semi-floozy button, in a warm golden orange that 'intenses' to deep, deep claret red in the center. Utter Autumn.

But it's the September asters that I just love and always will. All children need to make friends with flowers so that their adulthood is rich with those memories when they meet again.

Now in my neck 'o the woods, there ARE August Asters...they're just the drum roll. A trifle uninspired, they are dissheveled and white, the opening act for the asters who yawn and stretch one autumn day in that mysterious nearly lavender shade with some noses yellow and some noses purple . The hims and the hers. They light up the edges of the woods, the sides of the roads, the corners of our gardens. Wild and welcome, they are new visitors to whom we can tell how TOUGH the summer was. They were snoozing away all summer and never noticed a thing. No drought, no heat. They are wide awake now and ready for the party. They greet the goldenrods and make these exuberant sprays of tiny flowers that arch gracefully wherever they appear.

My childhood was filled with mock weddings, and the bride always carried an ARMLOAD of wild asters. The last of the season's marigolds went in my hair and those of ALL my attendants and all we were ever missing was the groom. Ah well.

Centuries later, I sit in the sun today watching herds of honeybees noodling delightedly in the wild asters that are happily populating my shoemaker's children-style garden. I hope there will be honeybees to noodle in the asters next year. We have our doubts, now that panic over encephalitis has a massive Malathion Spray being done on all the wetlands in our area from the air. All the soothing voices assure us that Malathion is 'safe'.....hello. NOT . It is totally DEADLY to honeybees and didn't we JUST bring them back from the horrors of almost losing them to those throat mites? Malathion is also deadly to fish, and when mixed with other chemicals, it becomes quite deadly to humans. Chains are breaking, people.

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