Outdoors

Nature Notes It's September, the kids are back in school, it gets dark early, and the asters and goldenrods are lighting up the edges of fields and woods. The tupelos are turning glossy burgundy, and red maples will soon follow. Butterflies and dragonflies are passing through. Many say the ninth month is the best of all 12; others say it's not quite as good as October. Monster Blues in the Mix The trouble with fishing for false albacore in Gardiner's Bay these days is that they're mixed in with monster bluefish. Notes From Madoo: Nadia Younes 455 East 51st Street, New York City. Gray and beige and another soft muted color. The stillest apartment I have ever known. I am there, day after exhausting day, my father dying in a nearby hospital. "He is how?" asks Nounou, Nadia's mother, who is visiting. Visiting from Cairo or Paris, I do not remember. There is a barefoot servant, who does not speak. "She is a mute. A Nubian. One of her family has always been with our family," says Nadia. And a blue Siamese always on patrol. Star Gardener By late summer the garden can become, quite unintentionally, a mass of yellow flowers. It takes some forward planning to determine the color palette and plant compositions that please you and that will end the summer garden with a bang.