10/9
October is: The winding down of the seasonal life. the last of the flowers are cut. Pumpkins are harvested, frost overnight, A rich coating of sparkling frost covers grasses and shrubs. Like a sugar syrup poured over the ditches and up the hillsides.
The grasses in the ditches turn a brilliant gold. Gardens are cut back and winter fencing goes up. Cheers from the high school football game fill the neighborhood and days get shorter and shorter. The natural world turns inward. My body seems to respond in kind with less and less energy and more desire to partake in other aspects of yearly life. I am a ball of momentum that will soon careen to an abrupt halt. Tension is ready to unwind, thoughts ready to deepen. Ready for other aspects, but the letting go of the outdoor working rhythm woven into my body is a bittersweet transition. Leaves hang on in short afternoons. Asters leaves turn red with white puffy seed heads. Maples are bare which is honestly the most beautiful of their forms.
10/12
I went on a run on a cool Sunday morning in the woods. I crested a little hill and caught sight of a poplar tree adorned in gold against a moody blue sky. Interesting how there is such a glow when the light grows dim and the trees lose their green. When the natural world makes the turn towards dormancy. Against the smell of decay, fallen leaves on green grass, the world overhead is awash with color and brilliance. Snapped a picture and resumed my watch for the last mile and a half. And I was lost in thought about the golds of October. Brilliant gold grasses, fat orange pumpkins, gold poplars, gold moon, gold twilight.
10/14
There is an overhanging branch, arching and graceful, in a couple of places along the roadside. I look for them instinctively as I drive those stretches. It holds itself up, out and over the ditch, through heavy snows and high wind. I notice them in all the seasons. They wear fresh green in the spring and a yellow shawl in the fall. In winter I adore them the most, the basic structure unencumbered. They are landmarks to me and they’ve been there for a decade or more. Like an outstretched hand from the poplar and birch, saying hello, reminding me of strength and grace, even when I tire of holding myself up.
10/15
We rake leaves and clean paths. Put up fences to protect shrubs from deer, wandering and hungry in the winter months and in the lean weeks of way spring. We leave the stalks standing and the button seed heads of summer flowers to entice foraging birds and encourage overwintering insects. We sweep and clean the garden landscape until it feels prepared. Not too much but not too little. Until it’s just right. I think of Wendell Barry when he speaks of the body’s daily work. I go through these motions in fall, as I have done for 16 years. I tire at the same time each year as the light and temperature wanes even when I don’t expect to. We are tethered together, the gardens and I, by these seasonal cycles. They tire also, and drop back to the earth for a winter’s rest.
10/16
I think it may be the peak of the golds these days and I feel as though I’ve strayed into a Bob Ross painting. This is the moment when a sharp wind is around the corner, about to blow through and the curtain of gold falls. All the leaves come down to abruptly commence the browns of November. It is my sincere hope, as we end the garden tending for the year, that our efforts have been instrumental in lending a moment or two of true peace, of centering and a glimpse of some sense of harmony that exists in the world, despite its injustice, drudgery and sham. To go looking when the despair settles, and even for a moment, to return to the simple eternal order of things. There is a patient persistent resiliency if you look closely. It can and does aid in restoring hope. 
10/21
Under a thinning canopy, the kaleidoscope of the understory and groundcover lights up! Brilliant red bush honeysuckle, creamy yellow thimbleberry, moose maple the color of beaujolais nouveau. Russett and tawny grasses with some that turn gold or even burnt orange. Spectacular. Amongst the grasses: hazelnut, birch, poplar, and mountain ash saplings- resplendent miniatures of their respective elders’. The rain brings down even more leaves. I am turning my thoughts to plant craft. Dried bundles of flowers and herbs still strung up on strings, drying since the long days of summer. They are about to become wreaths and bouquets for holiday gifts or botanical novelties to keep around the house as the snow piles up.
Today as I raked up leaves and cut back gardens and as the coming rain threatened our work day, a raven’s persistent voice was among the few birds left in the trees. As the woods grow quiet and the weather cools, the raven’s cawing is a pensive time travel. To times, years ago, in Alaska’s interior, when I first encountered ravens, and to time spent with Ada, an elderly Athabaskan woman. I was a college student, working as a volunteer for the fish and wildlife service, studying historical Athabaskan uses of medicinal plants. Ada was then a 75 year old woman and very much engaged in the traditional Athabaskan subsistence lifestyle. She was hard to keep up with. With gnarled, capable hands, a lively spirit and a magnetizing smile she made baskets and dug spruce roots, tanned hides and collected food, among so many other things, seemingly constantly. Anyone eager to learn and willing to venture out with her she called her ‘grandchildren’. We helped her with her fish nets and collected birch bark. She taught us Athabaskan words, the word for Raven in the upper tanana dialect is taatsàan’, and the name I still think of when I hear them. Ada lovingly practiced the traditions of her culture with materials from a land woven into her people. She taught me the value of persistent practice and refinement. Of resourcefulness and ingenuity. For me, witnessing this as a young woman was a privilege and a gift. I always think of her when I wind a wreath, on account of the way she coiled and stored spruce roots. It’s a very different thing, my floral crafts to her lived and practiced heritage, and I don’t pretend to recreate it. but I think of her at this time of year and I feel connected. To something larger, or her spirit, or the full circle of the past, or the rightness of things. Whatever the reason, the time of year has almost arrived, the time to bring the beauty of nature indoors.
10/26
I can understand why we can’t remain drenched in the splendor of fall, why Halloween celebrates death. Why we retreat indoors to roast the pumpkins and think about what winter will bring. We have a predilection to move forward, to anticipate what lies ahead and to keep time with the seasonal cycles as they present themselves in our environments. Today I cut down the frost kissed dahlias, rolled up the drip tape and cleared away the pumpkin vines. With the compost in a pile nearby, I will amend the beds in the coming weeks and plant the tulips. I look satisfyingly over the empty gardens and imagine them anew next season. I will plan and try new things. I think there is a personality type that lends itself to this type of existence. The one who favors trial and error, who likes the process of tinkering and discovery. The garden is the perfect lab for this kind of person, the creative type who likes plants. The one at work on herself as well, always in process, without the goal of arriving. Just summers to winters and the stuff learned in between, over and over, maybe gaining a little wisdom by the end.
