Late summer Irish gardens

            The Irish love their gardens, born in a rush of colors in early spring, children who dance in the new sun and nourish themselves with tender rains. By early summer, blooms mature and strut their beauty in warm breezes. They stand stately and calm, a gift to behold. Come late summer, time has begun to take its inevitable toll. Hydrangea petals begin to dry, cracks appear on their edges. Rose petals fall to bare earth or land on mattresses of still-green moss. Ivy on walls becomes burnished red and gold. These gardens aren’t dying. They merely enter a new stage of life. Like girls and young women, they move to middle age with a deepening loveliness.