I love this time of year. There's a reason Lucy Maud Montgomery's line from Anne of Green Gables is so famous: "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
Autumn is in full swing, and I find myself, as I do each year, reflecting on all the correspondences and associations with this month, delighting in pumpkin treats and hearty soups and crunchy leaves and crispy air. But there are a few other things that have been on my mind this month: one, the spiritual realm, and the way that autumn forces us to slow down and begin reflecting and dreaming, preparing for winter, leaning into our wisdom and traditions. And two: the way that manifests, in the slowing down of the earth, and the preparation we must do for winter.
I grew up on homestead vibes. My sisters and I watched Little House on the Prairie and read so many books that took place on farms of the past. We also grew up in a more rural setting, on farmland outside of our not-so-small town. Our parents gardened and my mom preserved as much of the food as she could. We were also fortunate enough to live next door to my grandparents, where my sisters and I helped them with preserving their garden harvests.
Now that I own a house in the city, I find myself fumbling through concepts that seem both foreign and familiar at the same time. I love south Minneapolis neighborhoods because the homes all have yards that have plenty of room for gardening, even if you have to be clever about it. My boyfriend and I planted our first garden last year, and I was shocked at how little my knowledge on the subject helped in the actual growing of plants. Somehow, remembering helping out as a kid didn't magically give me a green thumb.
The trees are gloriously red and orange and yellow right now, and some are even becoming bare as they stand among their piles of shed leaves. The air is chilly, and the temperature is creeping closer to freezing. I spent the day yesterday ripping up the garden to prepare the ground for winter, pulling up weeds and vines and cutting back my perennials. It was hard to believe that I was tugging dried up vines from the ground when it seemed like only weeks before I'd stood out in the warm morning sun planting seeds.
My dad used to start a lot of his seeds indoors. He'd also be quick to plant seeds outside, and my grandma would always shake her head and tell him he was supposed to wait until Jack Frost didn't come anymore. Each year my boyfriend and I have planted seeds inside, we've babysat sprouts for weeks until, for some reason we haven't figured out yet, they stop growing and just shrivel up and die.
Last year we planted seeds too late, in July. We still got a decent harvest, though half of what we planted didn't come up. This year, we got out in mid June, still a bit late--there's a community garden nearby where all the local green thumbs tend their craft, and we figured we were about two weeks behind them in planting. Most everything came up, but we're not that level of green thumb yet, and everything grew rambly and haphazardly, like a garden by chance.
As I pruned gnarly, wild tomato vines yesterday, digging up their thick stumps, I cursed the plants under my breath. The seeds from dropped tomatoes the year before all came up, and we didn't have enough cages for all of them, and we definitely didn't prune anything. What resulted was hundreds of tomatoes to be picked every week, on vines that crawled over each other and choked out other plants. As I snapped the vines off yesterday and left them to dry out, I vowed to buy dozens of tomato cages and to stay on top of pruning next year. And to pull up any we didn't plant by hand. My freezer is full of cherry tomatoes, but the October soil is fuller.
Under the chilly grey sky I worked, clearing the garden of dead vines and digging up the last carrots. I know that soon the ground will freeze, and I have to get the annuals out and the perennials trimmed so that the space is clear in spring. The soil needs organic matter before winter--I'll buy some dry manure from the store and spread the dark, nutrient-dense clumps across the soil before the snow comes.
I like that the physical and spiritual are so closely linked in autumn. As I prepare the ground for the months of snow and intense cold ahead, I realize I am also preparing myself for that beautiful and difficult season. As the leaves fall away, so do my receptors for excess. I find myself turning inward, thinking more about my home, since it will be the main setting of my life for the next five or six months. I want it to be a place of warmth and safety, a place where there is enough--enough food on the shelves and in the fridge, enough inspiration to keep creating, enough nurturing to fortify me with strength to go out into the chilly world and keep showing up to life.
I find myself leaning into that concept of energy, lighting candles and cooking soup on the stove and reading books and practicing yoga, all the while keeping an intention within me to be gentle and enjoy life. I find myself talking to my grandparents who've passed a bit more, asking for their wisdom and support. I wrap myself in sweaters and blankets and resist turning the heat up to a balmy temperature, conserving the energy in the house and breathing enough to let it be as it is.
I think the reason we love autumn so much is because of this attention to energy, this attention to our own body and home and how we feel and just being cozy and resting. We crave that turning inward, even if as a society it's hard to tell. We like the time to slow down after the intensity of summer and to simmer in our intentions, planting seeds we'll dream about over winter.
As I keep close watch on the state of the earth around me, monitoring how many leaves are left on the trees and how chilly the air is and relishing that increasingly pregnant quiet, that stillness, I trust I'll keep finding signals for tuning inward, for setting intentions and remembering to mirror nature itself. For it is only when we remember that we are part of nature can we grow with it.
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