This week I started cutting back the garden.

All the basil I didn't harvest has long since bolted. The lupine stalks are brown, their seeds scattered to the wind. A month ago I would have called them alive. Now they are standing there, holding a shape.

Here is what years of gardening have taught me. The plant doesn't fight this. In October, the garden plants begin pulling everything they have down into the root. The leaves aren't abandoned. They are composted, and offering encoded in its biology.

We are not always so wise. We keep watering what has already gone to root. We call it loyalty. We call it patience. Mostly it is fear of the bare ground.

So, if you want to orient to the cycles of nature, here is something to do tonight.

Find one spent thing. A stem from the garden, the last flower in the vase, a leaf from the sidewalk. Hold it in your hand. Say out loud what it was when it was alive, in one sentence. Then break it, lay it on the soil or in the compost, and leave it there.

Notice what your hands want to do. Some hands want to keep it. Some want to throw it away fast. Both are telling you something.

Anything that's alive is either growing or dying. The garden doesn't grieve October. It goes underground.

End Well.

Yana

P.S. If you haven't taken the quiz yet, it names the pattern you fall into when something is ending, and gives you a practice for it: Find your Ending Pattern

P.P.S. I've started a YouTube channel. The first video is on its way, and you'll see it here first.