When the Days Get Shorter
Fall reflections, seasonal depression, and the steady work of planting (and planning) ahead
The Shift Into Fall
The sun is setting earlier now, the trees are just starting to shift into color, and the hens are dropping feathers and slowing their egg production. My seasonal depression has started to creep in too. It happens every year, this slow turn. The light tilts, the fields fade, and suddenly summer feels far away.
Looking Back
This is the time when I start to reflect. What grew well this season? What flowers did I love to tend and harvest? What would I rather not grow again? What did customers at the farmers market reach for week after week?
Lisianthus: As much as I love growing them, their tall stems, ruffled petals, and long vase life, customers didn’t connect with them as much as I hoped. One woman even pointed at a stem and called it a carnation- A CARNATION! If I have space next season, I’ll probably use up the seeds I have left.
Snapdragons: A clear favorite, both for me and for customers. I’ll be planting even more next year in more colors and different varieties.
Sunflowers: I’ve learned I just don’t enjoy them. Harvesting feels like a chore, designing with them doesn’t excite me, and even though they’re a market staple, they’re not for me.
Customer favorites: More dahlias, more marigolds, more zinnias. I keep using them in arrangements, and customers keep buying them.
Planting Ahead
Because fall is also a beginning. As much as it feels like an ending, it’s also time to prepare for spring. Bulbs need to go in the ground, beds need to be cleared and prepped. Every year I tell myself I’ll get started early enough to overwinter a few things, to catch that first flush of spring blooms. And every year, fall sneaks up on me. This year is no different. One fall I’ll actually be prepared.
The Weight of Endings
It’s not easy to watch the plants I’ve nurtured all season come to their end, to know the first frost will wipe the fields clean. There’s a sadness in it, a longing for the warm days of summer, for more time. I never feel like there are enough of them. But it’s also a necessary break, a pause that keeps burnout at bay and makes it possible to find joy again in the often thankless work.
And if I’m honest, this season always leaves me feeling low. The shorter days, the fading fields, the hens molting and slowing down, it all adds up to a kind of heaviness I can’t shake. People call it seasonal depression, but to me it just feels like grief for a season I wish had lasted longer. Still, even in the middle of it, I know the cycle will turn. Soon there will be seeds to sow, new fields to clear, and flowers to harvest.
Poetic and apt David.