A Favourite Autumn Ritual

In the Autumn, everyone I know gets busy preparing for the coming Winter. There is lots to do inside and outside the house and with our cars, ensuring that we will be ready when the bitterly cold, snowy, icy Canadian winter weather arrives. But one of the things I like to do in the Autumn has more to do with the Spring that will eventually arrive. Every year at this time, I buy bulbs - tulips, daffodils, crocuses - to plant in my garden, knowing that they will be the first flowers I will see six months from now.

This Sunday was quite rainy but I cleaned my garden of dead annuals and weeds and prepared the earth for the bulbs. One beautiful red Gerbera was still blooming despite the cold rainy weather. It seemed to be watching me as I worked.

I placed this little clump of bulbs in their new home, safe in the earth, where they will sleep all winter and wake up in the Spring. I covered them over and dug more holes. It always makes me happy because it is like I am planting hope - hope that we will survive the cold dead winter, knowing that life will arrive again with the tulips and daffodils in the Spring.