The garden looks drab and miserable. It's no longer a garden, in fact, but one in mourning for what it once was. It is preparing for a long sleep. And in the process of that preparation it presents as a sad spectacle of the passage of time and the seasons. My husband has put out a tray on one of the stone benches full of seed and nuts. Instead of flowers we now have the constant presence of birds and squirrels and the occasional chipmunk. A frenzy of action replacing the slow-motion energy of growing plants thriving in sun and rain and mild temperatures.

A few days ago my husband emptied all of the garden pots and urns at the front of the house, quite a laborious project, undoing everything he had laboured to do in the early spring in preparation for planting and the expectation of taking pleasure in the fruits of that planting. Instead of colour we now see a monochrome of greys and browns.

In the ravine there is still ample autumn colour, though it's fast fading into darker, more subdued hues of surrender to the cold. I haven't been as assiduous as usual this year putting out peanuts as we amble along the trails in the ravine. Instead of daily, I've been placing them in the usual cache spots no more than once, sometimes twice a week. We miss our little black acquaintances, Stumpy and Stumpette; they too are now long gone. And we haven't seemed to come across as many of the little creatures appearing accustomed to our largess.

With the onset of the cold, however, far more are making themselves visible. From time to time we see some of them perched on the usual cache spots, as though awaiting peanuts to miraculously fall from the skies, so I've begun to scatter them about once again. Makes one pensive and somewhat sad to witness the annual transition, one that we never quite become accustomed to.