“Happily we bask in this warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures…”
Henry David Thoreau
“… On the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she’d cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress.” -Holly Black
Our Queen, Chloe, & Our Sweet Man, Gorilla [who we both miss so dearly] captured here in front of the shop, soaking up the rays & reminding us that is always appropriate to bathe in the sun, no matter the season.
I feel lucky to be a Marylander. We’re fortunate to see the seasons bleed into one another while our landscape gradually shifts around us. As swift and grand an entrance Autumn makes, coaxing annual crowds of “leaf peepers”, we can’t help but to rubber neck as she coyly dissipates after a mere few weeks. As if she stole the stars above, she marks our rural roads with untold treks who hint like crystalized winks; like an invisible map or an unspoken language that is only depicted by the richness of the moon. Dirt colored snow and black ice pockmark our ancient roads, but the myopic days will grow longer and the stubborn fissures of ice have no choice but to surrender into puddles of mud. Spring saunters in, teasing us with bouts of warmth scattered among the loitering winter days. A familiar seasonal tale, that we all know too well.
Our eyes flutter open to a sight for sore eyes. Trees grow obese with succulent emerald leaves that seem to burst from the countless queues of buds that wildly grow from its effete limbs.
The tasseled sleeves forever fashion the arms of weeping willows and elder pines; they bow down, touching the earth, as if they’re always welcoming the shift of seasons. Families of serpentine ivy crash and collide, choking neighboring geriatric trunks, suffocating any traces of dun and scorched flora; their chaotic embrace leave only the sweetest viridescent shades of summer behind.
The nomadic twilight yawns, casting a masquerade of dew resembling a kaleidoscope, a trapped play of colors that sheet the earth. Crepuscular rays breach through the clouds, nursing the sear-spotted grounds, and healing wounds from dry Autumn afternoons and the gelidity mornings of Winter.
She eventually succumbs, melting into the invincible glow of a horizon renewed. As nature things, we inherently form cocoons around these volatile days, wrapping the season around us like a childhood blanket. Triggered, we lounge and mask in the familiar warmth of nostalgia, soaking up the season’s diffusing aura like a trite kitchen sponge. Like ancient spirits, we haunt our own homes, roaming from room to room, infinitely searching for ‘ that something’; the first feel of an autumn gust, the taste of snowflakes waltzing on your tongue, the smell of newborn blooms and green or the feel of feverish rays that coat your face in yellow. Kitchen walls and family room floors are eternally saturated in patches of sun; light that escapes through our window panes and splits, scatters and finally settles across our homes.
Some are fortunate enough to taste that sweet sense of rumination with a ride down rural roads where the quiet and quaint encompass you, deafening the convoluted chants of society. Roused with change, we wake to the irenic songs and heavyhearted hymns that drown out the infinite thwarted apologies: whispers of seasonal remorse, the unquenchable thirst for the familiarity and the pining for the forgotten senses. Stretching out her ageless arms she escapes, seeping through the fissures of black-out curtains; her lemon stained fingers cast elongated shapes that creep up bedroom walls, beckoning us to rise and shine.
Canopies of archaic trees oscillate and kiss the ancient sky. Below, cliques of bare naked limbs gyrate to the requiem of nature. Her adularescence light stalks the woods edge, saturating our earth and moonstone waters in sweet simplicity. With arms wide open, we habitually welcome the change of the seasons as the notes of zephyr embrace us like an old friend. Migrating winds collide, and fracture, stimulating the deep, weary cells that lie dormant within us. The melodious atmosphere summons an abstruse awakening that cloaks the sapphire stained sky which cradles the full Harvest Moon. It’s always the time of the season.🎴
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. -George Santayana
the harvest moon.
Occasionally, the Full Moon closest to the equinox is actually the October Moon. When this happens, the October Moon is designated as the Harvest Moon, and the September Full Moon is named the Corn Moon.This is because this time of year—late summer into early fall—corresponds with the time of harvesting corn in much of the northern United States. For this reason, a number of Native American peoples traditionally used some variation of the name “Corn Moon” to refer to the Moon of either August or September.
ØŇ€ ΜØØŇ, ΜΔŇ¥ ŇΔΜ€Ş
Other Moon names for this month highlight how September is the transitional period between summer and fall: Autumn Moon (Cree), Falling Leaves Moon (Ojibwe), Leaves Turning Moon (Anishinaabe), Moon of Brown Leaves (Lakota), Yellow Leaf Moon (Assiniboine)
The behavior of animals is also a common theme, with Child Moon (Tlingit) referring to the time when young animals are weaned, and Mating Moon and Rutting Moon (both Cree) describing the time of year when certain animals, like moose, elk, and deer, are looking to mate
“The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.”
Frederic Lawrence Knowles
Ň€ЖŦ ₣ỮŁŁ ΜØØŇ
The September 2026 Full Harvest Moon peaks on Saturday, September 26, at 12:49 P.M. Eastern Time. Rising low on the horizon, it will appear bigger, brighter, and more golden than any other Moon this year, casting long light across autumn fields and evening skies.
“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.” -Rowland E. Robinson
asters & morning glories.
“Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul.”
Peggy Toney Horton
At the Secret Garden, we pride ourselves on creating aberrant works of art through flowers that embody whatever Mother Nature has to offer this season. Let Stephanie help you lighten those heavy days, celebrate the ever changing, send love, sympathy or simply remind someone that you are thinking of them. Alas, you do not have to ‘wait for someone to bring you flowers; plant your own garden, with flowers that decorate your own soul.’
