First frost this morning, so I'm happy to feast my eyes on the last of my summer blooms, saved yesterday as I was tearing out tender annuals and digging up dahlia roots. It was elegy day--flowerpots emptied and stacked in the shed, compost bins packed with weary nasturtiums and zinnias, outside chairs stowed in the basement, sticks bagged on the curb, outside table tarped and tucked behind the shed. Belatedly Tom even remembered to haul the air conditioner out of my study window and cart it into the basement. House and garden are beginning their trek into winter.

But the cold garden remains beautiful and busy. Kale ripples like a kelp forest; fennel dances along the front walkway. I'll be harvesting till snow.

Today is my younger son's 27th birthday, so the frost feels appropriate. I went into labor during the first ice storm of the season: his day has so often been the pivot to winter. I'm thinking of him now, tall and bearded and bright-eyed: as always, so heart-eager and loving; my once-dozy infant transformed into this man, this friend, this sparking mind.

Well, it's easy to be sentimental about such things, and bewildered, and mystified. Despite all the mistakes I made as their mother, my two boys turned out to be so good at being human. It's more than I deserve, but I'm grateful. And I love them so.

This will be a busy week, but also an unstructured one--lots of class planning, dealing with emails, probably setting up meetings for this and that; maybe an editing project will come back to me . . . I'll be trying to pull everything together so that on Friday I can embark on our biannual holiday to the cottage without feeling like I have too many swords dangling over my head. Of course, I'll have to work while I'm away: the next Monson class will be built into our travels. But I'm hoping that I won't have to do too much more than that.

November, as usual, will be crazy: a full weekend of teaching right after the election, then a reading in western Maine the following weekend, and then a trip south for Thanksgiving, not to mention another Monson trek in the midst of all of this . . . I ought to stop looking ahead. I just make myself anxious.

Instead, I'll focus on the walk I'm about to take . . . early morning chill, bright leaves falling. The comfort of breath and tread, mind waking up, watching, translating, inventing.