Once you plant them, they are with you always.

Every summer their leaves come out and then the stems come up, tall and slender and elastic.  And just like clockwork the first blossom pops open near the end of August.

Throughout September the stems get longer with more and more buds and luminescent, white flowers.

They bounce silently in the breeze.  They have no scent.  Joy emanates from them instead.

They are Japanese anemones.

I’ve had them in pink and I’ve had them in white.  They can be frustrating with their greedy habit of taking over a garden, but when the blossoms are on 3′ tall stems, you can’t be mad at them for liking to dominate.  In winter they disappear again under the ground.

I’ve tried to pull them out once or twice before, then regretted it afterwards, remembering the autumn blossoms, thinking how much I love them.  The plants become so large that they swallow up everything else in the garden, including azaleas.

They always come back, though, no matter how thoroughly I thought I had pulled each and every piece of plant out of the ground.  It makes me happy to have them back even though they completely take over.

Japanese anemones are just one of the things that I love about autumn.  When the light gets a little softer and the air has a slight crispness in the early morning and the setting sun backlights the garden in late afternoon with the most golden of colors.

And the anemones bounce in the breeze.

Telling you to be happy.