If they aren't about dried-out-and-keeled-over, September garden are about size, flowerpower, bright color, and a certain desperation on both plants and gardener: Frost comes in October, so it's now or never to reach full size, show us your fancy flowers, do what you've been saying all season that you'll do.

And then there's this quiet and industrious oddity, my thread-leaf mulberry.
It's been chugging along all season, without fainting in the heat or rotting in the rain. "Steady and sure" is its philosophy.

And thank goodness for it's persistence and consistency: If the plant itself got any weirder or quirkier or ephemeral, I don't think I could stand that additional uncertainty.

Instead, it just pours out leaves so spidery, so thread-thin, that it's hard to see how there could be enough chlorophyl in them to feed any activity at all. (True, the bush seems unlikely ever to top two feet, when a mulberry with normal leaves might well top thirty.)

And yet thread-thin doesn't mean thread-bare. The bush has it own delicate integrity and focus: No flowers and so no miserable collapse after they're through. No lolling spiky growth, no "Wow, look at me!" size either. Just leaf after leaf, mounding up inch by inch, month by month. And yet, with such leaves, inch by inch, month by month is just fine. We're forced to stop and take note—to pay respect for individuality that succeeds on its own terms. I'm envious.