Ode to a Very Short Fall
The sun and heat extended our drought and fire season until October and snow came just a month later here in the Pacific Northwest. Fall, always fleeting, was even more ephemeral this year and in reverence to this special season of messiness, decay and transition in the garden - we offer you this sweet little vignette of our recorded experience.
Fall is often the season when our gardens are the furthest away from whatever ideals of organization and aesthetic we may hold in our minds eye. After a many months of spring and summer glory, our annuals die off, our deciduous friends drop their leaves, our beds need more compost, our greenhouses are stuffed to bursting with the tender plants that need shelter from the cold snap and our tool sheds and tarps need some wrangling back into order.
For Anders and I, the leaders of the Garden Dawn, our inspiration and education comes from working with and observing plants everyday. Whether it’s the daily work in our client’s gardens, building our own compost bin from scrap wood, immersing ourselves in the forest to hunt for mushrooms, or gathering rose hips and hawthorn berries for tea after the first frost nips the fruit sweet and red- nature knows no boundaries as a teacher. Once you let her in, and begin to cultivate the wildness in yourself, the lessons start to bleed together as well.
How many of you feel a little frazzled coming into fall? Suddenly the busyness of summer drops away and we’re left with very little daylight and energy to deal with the aftermath. There may be ideas, stories or habits you’ve grown in the past year that now need to be composted back into fertile fecundity or left dormant for a season. What areas of your life need a bit of pruning? Cutting back the dead wood can be scary at first, but essential to growing stronger in spring. Your garden dreams for next year need time to drift and take form when the snow makes a blank slate of our backyards. The trees and bushes offer us the final harvest, fruits and nuts to store for the winter. The birds, squirrels and other little creatures are stocking up too, reminding us how important it is to plant and protect their sources of food.
Fall is one of our favorite seasons, although to be fair I would say all four are our favorites, they just change in rank as we enter each anew and fall in love all over again. New surprises, new lessons, new beauty is unfolding every moment, all around us, as our rock keeps spinning through infinite space, heading toward the darkest day of the year!
What’s your favorite part of autumn in the Pacific Northwest?
