October, 1920 
19 
THE MOODS OF AN AUTUMN GARDEN 
The autumn garden is not unlike an old 
man who, for all his occasional bad days, 
has still many years to run. Its vigor per¬ 
sists, though it is ebbing all the time. It is 
uneven, and yet it seems to have been 
carried from the very beginning. Those 
cosmos that dip and nod along the wall 
were sturdy from the first day they broke 
the sod 
In the JVaning Vigor of the Fall Lurks the Beginning of 
Next Years Glory 
RICHARDSON WRIGHT 
T HE garden shows three degrees of vigor. 
First the resurgent vigor of spring, lusty 
up-thrust of myriad blades and breathless rush 
to break into flower. Next, the full tide of 
summer, the complete, the robust growth. Then 
the mellow days of autumn and the waning of 
vigor. 
Each has its own rare colors and revelations 
of beauty. It is difficult to say which season 
gives the most delight. The gardener, though, 
who has followed the cycle of work (and only 
he who does the work really appreciates it) 
finds the autumn garden full of fascinating 
and subtle moods. 
The autumn garden is not unlike an old 
man who, for all his occasional bad days, still 
has many years to run. Its vigor persists 
though it is ebbing all the time. It is uneven, 
and yet such vigor as remains to it seems to 
have been carried from the very beginning, like 
the staunch blood of a good family. Those 
cosmos that dip and nod along the wall have 
been sturdy from the very first day they broke 
the soil. 
M UCH of September's glory, it always 
seemed to me, is inherited. She boasts, 
of course, the flash and flame of turning leaf 
and a satisfying number of hardy autumnal 
blossoms and she wears a scarf of blue mist 
around her shoulders, but think of all the 
things handed down to her from August! 
August, September and October remind me 
of three sisters endowed with diminishing 
amounts of this world’s goods. Late August 
possesses an abundance—innumerable asters, 
the white of sneezewort, the mallows, various 
sunflowers and golden glow, the flaming of tri- 
toma and the diversity of chrysanthemums. 
Many of these she passes on to September, and 
what September has left she hands on down for 
October to deck herself in during her final 
festive days of Indian summer. Then frosts 
whiten the fields before the approach of No¬ 
vember. Poor thing, there’s naught left No¬ 
vember save some gaudy berries—the last bits 
of old family jewelry that even the poorest are 
too proud to part with. 
It is this gradual ebbing of the garden’s 
vigor that makes so many people look upon 
autumn as a season of regrets. The old Chinese 
poet Lu Yun has expressed the feeling per¬ 
fectly in a beautiful line, “At the fall of the 
year there is autumn in my heart.” 
Once frost robs the garden of color, once the 
noble silhouettes of tall flower clumps and 
bushes and leafy trees are lost, then comes 
autumn in the heart. And yet this is strange, 
or the autumn months are among the busiest 
in the garden year. 
Think of all there is to do in the autumn— 
