My favorite color is blue, and late summer is when I have the most of it in my garden. Bees love it, too. The caryopteris is full of them – you can see one here.

The agastache is just as popular, but the bees zoomed off when I lifted my phone to take their picture.

The Russian sage in the herb garden arches its blue branches behind a white froth of garlic chives. Hummingbirds like Russian sage too, but are too fast for me.

It still looks like summer, but the critters and I can tell it’s winding down. The chipmunks are busy gathering tiny wild black cherries, their cheeks puffed out with the treasure they’re carrying off to their winter nests, hollows in some of the same trees the cherries came from. Black cherry trees, though prolific and fast-growing, always seem to be losing branches and developing hollows, so that I wondered how they ever survived. But their loss of bodily integrity is the chipmunk’s gain of home and hearth. Traipsing through the woods, no doubt he plants a few more cherries as he goes. The tree and chipmunk have a mutual aid society. Probably the squirrels are in on this, too. The pine trees are so laden with cones, the squirrels must be licking their non-lips in anticipation.

I was surprised to see a bunny in my herb garden. They don’t eat herbs, which I like to think is because then they’d be pre-seasoned, and too many critters eat bunnies as it is. So what was this one doing? A gracious and helpful bunny, she hopped further onto the brick path so I could get a better view. She was eating the weeds! She was cleaning weeds out from between the bricks! Oh best of bunnies! I had no idea. There is always something to be learned in the garden.