Closing the Garden, Closing a Chapter

This autumn, as I wrap up the garden, it seems like I'm also concluding one of the longest chapters of my life.

- The air has shifted. It carries that sharp, earthy scent of decay and damp leaves, the kind of smell that makes

you pause in your work, inhale, and feel both melancholy and relief. The beds are no longer green jungles but skeletal, their lush summer bodies reduced to stalks and seedheads. I pulled the last garlic weeks ago, tucked dahlias into crates, and cut armfuls of herbs to dry. Now I’m saving seeds- marigold, poppy in tiny envelopes I’ve folded of a promise waiting for spring.

But this year, more than any other, the act of putting the garden to bed feels like closing the door on something much larger. Not just a season. A whole era.

Four Years in the Soil…

I arrived here four years ago, moving with my kids, divorce, a failed new start after a life I thought would hold me broke apart. I wanted quiet, or at least something that wasn’t the noise of the past. The first spring, I dug my hands into the soil with more desperation than skill. I planted herbs because they were forgiving, greens because we needed food, garlic because it felt symbolic: you put something in the ground in the dark, and months later it comes back multiplied.

Those first beds were small, uneven, but they anchored me. They mirrored my own fragility: uncertain if I could root in this new place, unsure if I would thrive here or dry up. But like the herbs that outgrew their edges, I stretched past the borders I thought would contain me.

I remember that first summer, standing barefoot in the garden while my youngest strapped to my back between rows, tugging at kale leaves, hands always green-stained. I remember hanging laundry while the older kids bickered nearby, the sound of their voices softened by the buzzing of bees in the oregano. The garden became the backdrop to our survival- chaotic, messy, but alive.

The plants taught me more than any book could have.

The herbs showed me resilience: cut back harshly, they grew stronger, bushier, more fragrant. I started to understand that pruning wasn’t cruelty but a way to encourage life. A lesson I needed as I cut away relationships that no longer fed me.

The dahlias taught me about beauty that doesn’t apologize. This year they bloomed excessive oversized, showy blossoms that felt like living fireworks. They reminded me not everything has to be practical. Some things exist simply to dazzle.

Garlic, buried deep in the cold, taught me patience and faith in unseen work. Months underground, nothing to show for it, then suddenly green spears piercing snowmelt. A reminder that transformation often happens invisibly, long before it’s visible.

And the cannabis, thick and sticky with resin, taught me about medicine that grows from difficulty. She demanded attention staking, pruning, protection from mold- but her blossoms promised relief, calm, a different kind of breath when mine was shallow. She reminded me that tending carefully often leads to abundance.

Life Between the Rows: It wasn’t just about the plants. It was about what happened between them. I weeded when I felt unmoored. On mornings when my mind replayed old arguments, when I wondered if I had ruined my children’s sense of family forever, I sat on my knees pulling chickweed and purslane, breathing deeper as the soil crumbled between my fingers.

I planted when I felt despair. Rows of peas, beans, carrots the act of tucking seeds into soil steadied me. I couldn’t control much, but I could cover a seed, water it, and wait.

I harvested when I needed reminders of abundance. Bowls of lettuce so big I couldn’t eat them all, zucchinis sneaking up overnight, baskets of tomatoes carried inside by children whose hands could barely hold them. We ate well, not just from the calories but from the proof that something was working, something was giving back.

My kids grew alongside the garden. One summer they built fairy houses under the marigolds, another year they strung pumpkin vines along the fence. They grumbled about weeding but knew how to spot cucumber beetles, how to tell when a tomato was ripe. In tending the garden together, we were also re-rooting our family in this new soil.

The garden became more than food: it became medicine cabinet and sanctuary.

When fevers came, I clipped yarrow. When anxieties pressed down on me, I brewed lemon balm tea. I held sprigs of sage over steam for sore throats. And at night, when insomnia and worry tangled me up, chamomile eased me, and sometimes cannabis softened the edges of my mind.

I started to see these plants as companions. Not resources to be extracted but allies to be listened to. Each with a personality: motherwort, steady and strong; chamomile, gentle but insistent; cannabis, lush and protective.

In saving their seeds, I felt myself stitched into an older rhythm, one that women before me had known passing down knowledge of plants, saving seeds in jars, carrying them across migrations. Each envelope of seeds became both memory and inheritance.

Seed saving has become my favorite ritual. I shake dried marigold heads, catching their little arrows of seed. I break open poppy pods, watching hundreds of tiny specks scatter. Each packet I label is more than potential… it’s a memory. These grew in the soil of my hardest years, witnessed both grief and resilience.

When I save them, I’m saving more than plants. I’m saving the reminder that life cycles back, that endings are only preludes.

And because abundance is meant to be shared, I save more than I need.

This season, I’ve got handmade envelopes of marigold and poppy seeds, and I’ll happily mail them out. Plant them, and you’ll be planting a piece of this chapter, letting it bloom somewhere far beyond me.

As I close the garden, gratitude floods me. Gratitude for Deb and Phil, who handed me dahlia tubers and friendship. Gratitude for the land, which held me when little else did. Gratitude for my children, who grew alongside the greens and sunflowers, who made forts and fights and laughter among the rows.

This chapter has been long, often heavy. But as I tuck away the seeds and stack the tools, I realize: it’s time to let it go.

Letting go isn’t the same as losing.

The soil knows this.

The leaves that fall become compost, the roots that rot feed worms, the seeds in envelopes sleep until spring.

The garden rests now.

And maybe I can too.

But rest, like soil, is not an ending. Roots deepen underground. Life bides its time. And when the light returns, both I and the garden will be ready to grow again.

🪽