One September I was a student attending an intensive seminar on Japanese garden art in Kyoto. Dinner was not included in our tuition, so I ate lots of udon in broth with perhaps one tempura shrimp and several tempura green beans as garnish. I remember going through the markets in awe at the beautiful, extremely expensive produce - the first chestnuts, presented in their husks, and wonderful matsutake mushrooms, much too expensive for a student to buy. Here on Creek Road we found a "mother load" of black chanterelles last Wednesday. Dinner at my neighbors was pasta with an Alfredo sauce and three kinds of chanterelles (golden, black, and tiny red ones) and oyster mushrooms. Not quite up to five, but all wild gathered. Let the rains continue! And in the garden at night the katydids shrill "katy did, katy did, katy didn't". I await colchicums to emerge and flower as another indication that summer is on the wane. regards from Judy in humid New Jersey where summer is adorned with big hybrid gladiolus adding lime green and luscious red flowers to a landscape intensely perfumed by Polianthes tuberosa. Tigridia 'Aurea' opens a couple of flowers each day. And Acidanthera murielae adds its attractive display to a planting of purple-leafed canna and Plectranthus argentatus.