READER, I recently discovered a secret garden. Ready with my camera, I decided to take a stroll down my street and capture some of the beautiful summer blooms.

Slowly making my way I found and captured the most perfect wine-colored and white dahlia, feminine ruffled petaled hot pink roses, a creamy white rose with a gold eye in its center and raining petals at its side, as well as almost vintage-like tiny very pale clusters of blushing ballerina pink rosettes. Some were belllike, super tall, just drooping sunflowers, plus sweeping, swinging weeping willows, a spreading sunset colored orange and yellow day lily, ubiquitous deep yellow black eyed susans and the wildly growing, fragrant, long lavender herb with silvery-sage stemmed bushes, buzzing with their bees and fluttering with butterlies.

IT’S that time of year again. Backpacks and school binders tumble off the shelves at Target. Crossing guards in bright orange vests patrol the road and parents are bemoaning the frenzied schedule that “back to school” requires.

But there’s a positive energy in the air as kids, tanned and freckled from the summer, greet each other in the school yard as they begin a new school year.

The fall is a time for new beginnings and the Jewish calendar is right on track. Rosh Hashanah, which in Hebrew literally means “head of the year,” kicks off the parade of holidays with a spirit of perennial optimism.