Opinion

If you think gardening ends with the first frost of autumn, well you haven’t gardened much - at least not if you don’t consider winterizing your plot part of the green thumb timeline. Recently several friends and I took on the task of adding soil builders to our community garden.

People are Dying To Get in There October was a lot of skeletons and zombies and ghosts and it made me realize that Halloween omits an important step before the afterlife. The transition.

After my knee surgery, I knew it would be important to create some new routines to have to follow in my time of recovery. One of my favorites was that after work each day, I would crutch into my PT studio (aka the guest bedroom) and turn on Jeopardy to accompany my exercises.

I don’t spend a lot of time on television - whether it be television shows, or movies. I’ve shocked people with my lack of knowledge about classic movies -having never watched most of them.

So, you monarch butterfly fans out there, are you preparing your Asclepias seeds for cold stratification this fall? “Asclep….” what? Cold Strat…huh?” Let me re-phrase that: “Are you winterizing your milkweed seeds this fall?’ For those who collect milkweed seeds for developing or extending their own crop of butterfly habitat, the first hard frost of fall is a good time to consider planting milkweed seeds, especially those you recently collected from the flurry of puffy, seed-bearing wisps scattered by the winds this fall. Those seeds can be planted now or collected next spring.

Trick or Treat The evening is coming when children, and I use that term “children” loosely, will come to my door, dressed in costumes that range from cute to the macabre to the barely there. These little people will hold their bag of candy/loot in front of me, and utter the phrase “Trick or Treat”.

What a beautiful weekend and what a beautiful week it followed. And yet, my leaves lay where they fell. No gumption to go out and do anything. I am enjoying just going out and sitting and holding and petting cats and watching the leaves fall. Does that count?

Fear Not October is the month where everyone tries to scare me. They plant ghosts and goblins and witches and skeletons in their front yard.

While I’m still plowing through my most chaotic month of the year, I’ve come to the realization that sometimes happiness is really ten minutes in the sun with a cup of coffee, away from all devices of contact. It can be pretty easy to find yourself overwhelmed quite suddenly without realizing it’s happening. My moment came after a long weekend of photography work, with a full day of wedding photography followed by a day of photographing milestones for toddlers.