After a morning’s work, I stepped out on the balcony and saw wild turkeys slowly picking their way through the frost-bent buckwheat around my garden. These birds are amazingly large, with their red and gum-blue heads vibrant colors against the autumn’s gold. By the time I was in the garden, the turkeys had gone on their way, back into the woods.

With my hands, I tore out the pepper plants, the marigolds and nasturtiums, the cosmos, the end of the squash, these beauties finished for this year. The sunflowers and zinnias I left standing, heads bent down, yet rich with seed, for the birds.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet we feel peaceful there.

–– Natalie Goldberg

Garden/West Woodbury, Vermont