I’ve heard late fall being tenderly referred to as a season of ‘sweet disorder.’ A new morning chill suggests that first frost is likely on the horizon, and with it the closing of the growing season. Deciduous trees are showing their true colors as chlorophyll fades, revealing the bold pigments that were always already there, only hiding. What looks to us like fireworks is really the sign of a sure descent towards abscision, the shedding of now dispensable leaves before the dry, cold winter sets in. Each fallen leaf reveals next year’s leaf bud already fully formed, opening a lovely pocket of time where the dying flutters, so to speak, beside the not-yet born.

The mad brilliance of maple, dogwood, and tupelo has a perfect counterpoint in the dark seed heads and collapsing stems underfoot; the brown, bronze, and burgundy of perennials slowly retreating into their roots as foliage fades. One of the facts separating the gardener from the indoor folk is the basic understanding that most perennial plants go through an annual cycle of spring emergence, warm season growth, bloom, and seed, before retreating back for the winter into roots fattened and fueled throughout the warm season. Plants follow a well-rehearsed rhythm of rise and fall, expansion and contraction, light-and-rain-driven reach and retreat—Which makes you wonder why humans sometimes picture both life and history as grand, mysterious arcs, when they more likely circle and cycle much like grasses and trees.

We, temperate-climate dwellers, get to experience this for ourselves when we pay even a little bit of attention to how the seasons make us feel and what they invite us to do. This year’s growing season is almost done, many seeds have already scattered—though holy and viburnum berries still hang for the birds, the ginkgos are stinking us up with their foul-scented fruit, and the tiny crabapples, shining like jewels, are now finally almost sweet. Like the birds, we’re called to fuel up and migrate south fast (though on second thought maybe not to Florida) or else coil up, anchor down, and patiently wait for the planet’s northern hemisphere to tilt towards the sun again. In the meantime, here’s to retreating underground into the wonderfully stubborn power of roots.