Dig up all the yellow invasives, front and side. Pick up catalpa pods. Cut back ornaments grasses to make room for new growth.
Shop for plants to bring back structure to front bed: iris, peonies, and euphorbia (because there was no ligularia). Don’t bother with shrubs because dryer vent in foundation kills them all.
Rake front bed, half of south bed, dethatch parts of lawn. Pick up catalpa pods.
Pull out dead blades from spider plants. Remove desiccated leftovers from around the hostas. Fill two bird baths — one new one, a pretty copper bowl! Pick up catalpa pods.
Remove dried stalks from sedum — carefully! —remembering the time you got three nasty splinters in your thumb doing just that and that asswipe doctor didn’t believe you and kept asking you if you bite your cuticles.
Scoop up and remove some sunflower hulls. Pick up catalpa pods. Fill the porch planter with pansies, petunias, and allium. Brace yourself to begin removing echinacea from the front bed.
Talk to Scott about chipmunks. Shop for a second umbrella. Unwrap patio furniture.
And now, I’m pooped. Have stock on the stove for butternut ginger soup for dinner. Easy peasy.
I can hardly wait til tomorrow for the new Perry Mason. May go back and watch episodes four and five again. The plot is densely woven (in a good way).
It’s 60 degrees here. Crickets sing their autumnal songs. Hard not to feel blessed, with zero hurricanes coming at us and zero fires raging nearby. 
The finches are feeding on the echinacea seed heads near the side door. When I come out, they fly off, startled and pretty.
I am adding batting to the single-layer sections of the global warming quilt. Tricky. Fussy in a way that would be avoided if I were a Point-A-to-Point-B creator. Believe me, sometimes I wish I was.
But just look at that amaranth! It is one of the few glorious results of my seed planting efforts this year. Exactly ONE of the dozens of sunflower seeds I planted survived the rabbits.
The huge squash leaves came from a rogue seed that took root when a piece of compost fell into a yard waste bin and took off! I love how surprises arrive in the garden with a casual regularity that defy their miraculous nature.
So many plants thriving, I’ll try not to get too hung up on the climbing hydrangea that died this year (another victim of the black walnut?). Out back, we splurged and planted some decent-sized birches and a lovely large pine. They’re all beautiful and functional as screening and, as it turns out, economical because I no longer feel any urgency about replacing our fence.
