September's Flower

Day 323: A glad, good September Morn to you, my readers! As many of you know, this is a special day for me, second only to Christmas and that, only because Christmas is the holiday recognized by the majority of my friends. September Morn heralds the season of colour, of cool nights and blithe days, of harvest; it opens "the beautiful month," my favourite time to be in the high country, and no plant is more symbolic of September than the Bog Gentian. These flowers are the last to bloom in the subalpine meadows, and they are so intensely blue that they seem to be drawing the sky into themselves, husbanding the summer's cloudless days, taking the azure vault of the heavens into their roots, there to hold it in care through the long winter. Sometimes a white form can be found, an errant cloud browsing through a sunny day like a wayward sheep. Ah, September! If we must give farewell to summer, you have consoled us with the glorious Bog Gentian.