October arrives in a swirl of fragrant blue leaf smoke, the sweetness of slightly frosted MacIntosh apples, and little hard acorns falling. We are in the midst of cool crisp days, purple mists, and Nature recklessly tossing her whole palette of dazzling tones through fields and woodlands.

I love planting bulbs. It is making promises with tomorrow, believing in next year and the future.

Some days confidence shrinks to the size of a pea, and the backbone feels like a feather. We want to be somewhere else, and don't know where - want to be someone else and don't know who.

November is chill, frosted mornings with a silver sun rising behind the trees, red cardinals at the feeders, and squirrels running scallops along the tops of the gray stone walls.

A flower is a daisy chain, a graduation, a valentine a flower is New Year's Eve and an orchid in your hair a flower is a single geranium blooming in a tin can on a murky city fire-escape an acre of roses at the Botanical Gardens and the first gold crocus of spring! ... a flower is a birth, a wedding, a leaving of this life.

In March winter is holding back and spring is pulling forward. Something holds and something pulls inside of us too.

Lilacs are May in essence.

In July everybody you telephone is somewhere else - either on the beach or on vacation, and half the time you're somewhere else too.

My prayer for the new year is that I may have the courage and the stamina to let Life happen to me, to accept its joys and successes, and to take in stride the learning that stretches us and the growing pains. Perhaps, to put it simply, my wish for the New Year is: may we love more, live more, laugh more. And so may you!