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| Hello from Cleveland, where our flowers are heeding the whispers of frost to come. This was my best summer yet for blooms, which makes their departure harder to accept in this favorite season of mine. |
| This was the summer I gave up trying to coax hundreds of wildflowers in the beds around the deck. The soil that gives birth to such a bounty in our vegetable garden is indifferent to flowers. This is a bias I can finally forgive, but only because of the garden that came to life above the beds, on our deck. |
| I got carried away. I planted a garden of 20 pots, many of them so large they became gardens within the garden. I followed the guidance of experts at two favorite nurseries – one online, one a 10-minute drive away — and relished reciting the names of the flowers as I welcomed them to their new homes: Petunia Colorblitz and Coleus Campfire, and Calibrachoa, nicknamed "million bells." I planted Dragon Wing Pink Begonia, too, and greenery with names like Silver Licorice, Sweet Potato Vine and Dichondra. One of my new favorites from this summer, Starlight Petunia, looks like it sounds: stars twinkling in the night sky of deep purple petals. |
| Connie on baseball: How the Guardians, and SpongeBob, finally made me fall in love with Cleveland baseball |
| I included fuchsia and four towering Mandevillas, as I have for 30 years, starting with my single-mother years. We rented, and it was not my right to alter the sparce landscaping. So, every summer, I filled our porch and front walkway with potted plants. This was my daughter's childhood, and I wanted to fill it with whatever magic I could conjure. |
 | | Connie Schultz is an Opinion columnist for USA TODAY. | | Lylah Rose Wolff | |
| She's grown now and has two children, including a four-year-old daughter who loved this summer's potted garden. One morning in July she sat on our dining room table and spent hours painting a set of butterfly wings. Later that day, in the brief moment when the setting sun turns our deck a warm pink, she opened the door and took flight in the garden, with rescue dog Walter at her side. |
| Of course, I captured that picture. Of course, it is framed where I see it every day. It is my comfort now, a reminder that not so long ago another little girl discovered magic right outside our doors. |
| We've emptied most of the flowerpots for compost now. My flowers with the fancy names will live again, but as somebody else. The Mandevillas, always the last to go, have begun to wither on the vine. |
| I welcome every season, but not without regret. Everything comes to an end, as I'm reminded four times a year. That message is our burden or our gift, depending on our perspective. For that, I offer a passage from Madeleine L'Engle's "The Summer of the Great-Grandmother": |
| "Our lives are given a certain dignity by their very evanescence. If there were never to be an end to my quiet moments at the brook, if I could sit on the rock forever, I would not treasure these minutes so much. If our associations with the people we love were to have no termination, we would not value them as much as we do." |
| She's right, we know it. And still we yearn. |
| - Connie Schultz |
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