:. eden, hardly .:

My garden sure took a hit this summer. With our hot-humid-rainy-repeat weather, there weren't many good gardening hours to be had. And of course by July, I'm about gardened-out anyway. (Yes, I'm lazy.) Add to that the usual busyness of summer as well as all those unexpected things of which life is made.

Suffice it to say, my asters didn't get pinched once, the paths are overgrown, nothing has been dead-headed, and the weeds have won the day. There are even a few impatiens still in the flat in which they arrived from the garden center in May, waiting to be planted. (!)

BUT.

Look what God decided to grace me with, in a year when He knew I wouldn't have the time/energy to keep up:

The lovely white-flowered vine is a sweet autumn clematis. I noticed it earlier in the spring, a clump of foliage that I certainly hadn't planted. But there it was, twining right up the trellis on which my mandevilla reigns supreme. I thought the leaves looked like a clematis, but surely I couldn't be so lucky as to get something so lovely to volunteer in my yard.

As the summer went on it got fuller and fuller, and then it started to bud. Oh my stars, it really is a sweet autumn clematis!

The great thing about this story is that I actually didn't get just one beautiful vine. God graced me with two. The second one is about 10 feet further down the bed, placed neatly and precisely in the gap between two arborvitaes.

And wouldn't you know it, both vines are visible from my kitchen window.

The original Master Gardener is still at work!

And on a similar note, here is something else that absolutely makes me happy:

My "yarn-at-a-glance" shelf, full of winter brights and cozy darks, each just waiting to be made into something lovely.

I am blessed, indeed.