It’s a landscape of brown and bent things, the October Garden.

Some may find it easy to consider such a plot—blasted by a killing frost and marked by desiccated plants whose shapes conjure up a nearly human gesture of surrender—and imagine that this is the end of things. But if we are honest with ourselves, we acknowledge that the October garden signifies but one notch on a wheel always rolling forward, toward another flowering and fruiting, another harvest, and another dormancy. We can only take our place in the cycle, flower and fruit in our turn, and celebrate the forward motion through all of its phases.


When my daughter Kelsey was a toddler, she loved to join me in the garden, especially during the planting phase. She trundled around with a small hand-spade I gave her, digging holes in the soil and dropping in small pebbles or bits of twig or, sometimes, imaginary seeds. Then with great care she would cover these deposits with a little soil and pat it all down nicely.

I realized early on that to avoid chaos in my own planned garden beds, I needed to provide her a space of her own, and so was born Kelsey’s Corner. There she was free to dig and plant as she wished without any interference from me. I gave her any seeds she wanted, let her experiment and learn as I had about what grows where and why.

Over time, that little patch grew into a favorite place in the garden. Kelsey learned she had to plan ahead and select plants that would thrive in the microclimate of that particular space. She also learned to weed and water and do all that a garden plot requires. Her tastes ran to flowers—marigolds, poppies, forget-me-nots, daisies, and a wild rosebush we transplanted from another spot in the yard. This corner reached its peak when she was in her adolescent years, still tied to the family unit, to the house and yard.

As she approached high school, Kelsey’s focus strayed from the garden. I didn’t resist this change, nor did I resent it. It seemed inevitable that something as simple and mundane as working in the dirt gave way to the flash and charm of a budding social life. Her plot fell victim to neglect and I gradually assumed stewardship of the space. Even so, I knew it always would be Kelsey’s Corner.

Now my daughter is eighteen, in the last weeks of her high school career. Our mailbox is laden with college catalogs, reminding me that the world has come for this young woman and she will soon answer its call. Her leaving is both a transformative event for her and similarly, a major change for me and her mother.

We are, in fact, already in the transition.

But it is mid-April in Colorado, with the usual fits and starts of spring. Two inches of snow cover the ground one morning but melt by mid-afternoon under a brilliant sun. The next day, a brisk wind tears small branches off the elms and scatters them in the front yard. The following day, the weather is so warm and the sun so hot, I have to take frequent breaks in the shade as I putter about the garden, clearing refuse from the previous season and turning the soil to inspect its condition. The next day, a cold rain falls and turns to slushy snow at dusk.

In Kelsey’s Corner, a few Echinacea plants stand, their stiff brown stems fully arced so the seed heads drop their bounty to the soil. And sure enough, there at the feet of the dead stalks, the plants are sending up the first green shoots.

So it is I can’t look at this transition in my life as the end of anything. It is merely one point on a cycle that will repeat, always the same in its larger revolution but colored and shaped uniquely with each turn. Now the wheel will roll with Kelsey as she moves into her adult life.

Let her live as she will, let her return when she can, and whether she comes alone or in company, she’ll be welcomed home. I’ll keep the garden until then, and will tend Kelsey’s Corner faithfully. It will cycle annually, as it should, as it must. So will my wife and I, rolling on toward a different phase of our lives together, one that promises a rich harvest we can only now guess at.