Robert Hutchinson Finch:
(October 9, 1925 – October 10, 1995).
Republican politician from La Canada Flintridge, California.
From 1967 to 1969, he served as the 38th Lieutenant Governor of California. Following Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968, he was appointed Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1969. He was the Counselor to the President from 1970 until 1972. During the 1976 California United States Senate election, he lost in the Republican primary to S.I. Hayakawa.
But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head. The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on.
Finch describes both a ‘seasonal and emotional change’:
– In midsummer, the garden demanded intense attention, creating a strong, almost possessive bond.
– By September, the weather is cooler, the sunlight gentler, and the harvest smaller.
– As the garden’s productive period ends, the gardener becomes less controlling and more detached.
More broadly, the passage suggests that ‘intense relationships naturally soften with time’. September represents maturity, release, and peaceful acceptance after the passion and labor of summer.
> “The intense midsummer relationship that brought it on” refers to the gardener’s close work with the garden—the effort that produced the harvest.
✍️ Author and origin:
This passage is generally attributed to Robert Finch an American nature writer known for essays about Cape Cod, gardening, and the seasons.
It is a literary quotation. It is frequently reproduced in collections of September and autumn quotations, although a precise original essay or book citation is often not supplied, so the exact first publication is uncertain.
