I have hung up my garden hat after planting another row of garlic. It’s been nice, in a freaky sort of way, to postpone freezing weather in this part of the Midwest. But it’s unnatural, although maybe the natural order is changing a wee bit in this, which is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. Astonishingly, I did harvest a few tomatoes in rather paler colors than their intense August hues, and my roses are still blooming. Today 72 degrees. Tomorrow, a low of 32, they say, followed by lows of 25 degrees on the weekend. So I cut the last roses of fall to bring them in and shelter them. They are too beautiful to blast.

Gardeners know that seasons change, nothing lasts, gather ye rosebuds while ye may, etc. Poets and reflective people are inclined to see plenty of metaphors in gardening and the march of the seasons. I love it that there are so many meanings, diverse ways of understanding what is beautiful and what is natural. I also love it that there is a science to gardening. There are things you must do: I need to water the new hackberry tree planted on my lawn and not just wax romantic about how only God could make a tree. God may have made it, but this particular tree came from a local nursery and the city planted it and it is now up to me to tend it. The poets and philosophers need to join hands with those wearing gardening gloves. There is always work to be done. It just differs by season.