The Last Task

It is necessary to take time from even the things we love

This week, the garlic will go into the garden. Sometime after we finish the dinner made of the foods we have gathered to celebrate the year's final harvest, I will head out to the garden to plant the garlic as my final moment with the damp and wet soil this year. I will tuck it in beneath fresh compost and straw with labels to indicate the cloves' flavors, story, and origin that will turn to heads and scapes in the growing season ahead. These final moments will be both a testament to my faith in the rhythms of this land that is home and a promise to the land that when the snow melts, I will return here renewed just as she will be.

With the snow appearing regularly in the forecast, the nights are in the mid-twenties, and even as I write this, snow is still gathered by mid-day in the garden beds. Things feel ready for the final task of the garden. The unseasonable warmth over the last week will disappear as if it never happened. The days when the calendula did its final bloom will decay just as the leaves of the plant are doing the same under the snow in the coming days. These are the signs of the end of Autumn and for the last planting of the year to happen.

Once the garlic is in the ground, the time has come to leave my post as a gardener for a few months till the seeds call to me in the depths of winter to be started because winter doesn’t last forever. Instead, I will take up other hobbies and passions like doing more art, skiing, snowy hikes, puzzles, sewing, cooking slowly from what we have harvested and gathered, and enjoying time to rest and reflect with those I love.

Believe it or not, as much as I love gardening, I also enjoy the moment when everything is put to bed this time of year. Just as the garden has been cleared and put to bed, it feels like I myself can shift gears in life to renew myself as well.