It's been a busy fall and so we haven't gotten to our usual fall yard clean-up ritual until now. Luckily, it's been really mild. Sometimes we have snow by this point in the year, but it was 79 degrees as late as this past Thursday.
The first step is harvesting what I can from what's left in the garden--blooms, herbs, hot peppers--and preparing them for storage and use throughout the winter. Herbs go to hang in the attic from the rafters. Hot peppers are strung up using needle and thread and hung as decorations and to dry in sunny windows. When they feel sufficiently dry, I will grind them up to make red pepper powder. The blooms--we just enjoy those for the next few days and then compost them when the turn brown.
The second step of fall clean-up is more Dan's thing. He likes things tidy--so, he cuts all of the herbs way back and off the sidewalk. He rips out old dried bean and tomato plants and mows the lawn one last time. But every year, I swear I'm going to dig up dahlias and save their tubers for the next planting season. I never get that done. Ha! Well, I have done it this year. And if I am successful and the tubers survive the winter to grow again next spring, I will invest money in some larger showier dahlias.
But this time of year, I feel like I always think about the cycle of things and how strange it is that beauty comes from such unusual looking starts. Seeds, these tubers, bulbs--none of them handsome things, but they are what make the growing part of the year so gorgeous. Digging them up, cleaning them, and storing them carefully throughout the winter feels like paying homage to that, and to being a steward of the future. I'm storing dahlia tubers--but by extension, I am storing summer nights sitting out on the front porch with friends, grilling out in the back yard, fireflies winking off and on as they rise from the garden where they hide and rest during the day.
It feels like righteous work.
