How to make a long lasting garden?

These photos of our garden were taken yesterday (October 6)—a birthday of one of our loved ones.  If we couldn’t deliver the flowers, we at least transmit the photos of them.  They certainly do not look like they’re on their way out.

To maintain a garden this size, one needs flowers, lots of them; so all the flowers can paint our garden with delight (paraphrasing from a song of Spring in Love’s Labour’s Lost).  They should be long lasting; this is one of the criteria in choosing the flowers.  A good friend of us told me the Chinese name of zinnia is 百日草, which means they will bloom for 100 days.

As I have said zinnia led me to Emily Dickinson, or the other way around, I no longer remember.  It doesn’t matter.

Roses have seen their best days, but they are not the last rose of the summer yet.

How long do the vivacious canna blooms last? Many weeks, but not 100 days.  So I planted the canna over a period of 5 or 6 weeks; the early bloom has long faded, some are blooming and beaming with the bright red color now; some haven’t even bloomed yet.   This is why some of the celosia are still “burning with dazzling flame” while most have lost their luster.

Some like it hot, especially the luffa, warm and hot days are conducive for luffa growth; we  no longer have that luxury.  These luffas are like teenager girls, anxious to grow and mature, before the first frost comes.  Like Thomas Jefferson who recorded the date of the first fall frost each year in his garden Journal, we are watching the first frost with a vigilant eye.

A comment from a good friend (see photo below),

只見一張空椅子，沒有主人，故作一首打油詩，為其抱屈。

問君何處桃源(花園，或絲瓜園)可避暑，

空有涼椅等君半夜回。

This is another poem by our good friend.  If our garden can bring forth all these beautiful poems from our friends, the beauty of our garden must be aesthetic and exquisite.

    蔡家花園
誰家花園百花開？
引得蜂蝶過牆來，
閒坐書生瓜棚下，
又吟又飲且開懷。

            Tsai's Garden
Who's garden with hundreds of flowers still blooming?
Drawing the bees and butterflies fence crossing ,
A reader leisurely sitting under the squash awning,
Heartily enjoying by reading and drinking.