The October Garden, 2023
October was for mud caked on pants and zinnia flowers on cake. It was the playlist for autumn on repeat and dinosaurs at the torn-up tree stump.
October was acorns dropping in droves and somehow never kerkplunking on our heads! It was the playful joy of children, moms talking, and a soccer ball crackling over marigolds. It was filling a bucket with the old orange and the 1-year-olds helping me pinch off those spent mums.
It was always the picking up of discarded fruit pouches, forgotten cheese, left water bottle, or ballooned crackers. The October garden was the height of everything good in this thick season of motherhood. The zinnias burst to life for the height of their glory and my son’s flower erupted in bloom, and my red rose took off into the sky.
And if you listen you’ll hear it…
Children laughing, mothers talking, acorns drumming, cackling marigolds, rustling mirth of mums when 1-year-old topples on, aging rose being pruned murmuring “I’m not done blooming yet.”
And stalwart zinnias with their trumpeting color, staccato, staccato, staccato, garden gate closing, opening, closing, opening, always opening…blooming, bursting, creaking, cackling, drumming, rustling, murmuring, talking, laughing…
It’s the sound of flowers,
sound of us.
Why November is so special to me
(story of my garden journal, a mug, first ever positive pregnancy test)
Can I trust God with my happiness?
(what I’ve wrestled with in these early years of motherhood, how joy is as vulnerable as grief)
This Must Be What Heave Is Like…
(how God lifted my spirits during a hard stretch of summer)
Sierra V. Fedorko 
Leave a comment