I’ve always loved November because it has my birthday in it. It’s my personal new year, the end of one thing that begins another. This is a time of year that could reasonably produce melancholy, but for me it’s a time for opening presents and eating cake. Actually, I prefer pie, but same idea – festive. Joyous. It was mild enough this fall that our pear tree still boasts some color, but the bones of the tree are already showing through.

Frost has fractured the zinnias and cosmos, but the big white hydrangea heads have dried on their stalks into sturdy puffs, ready to be cut and brought inside to decorate the Thanksgiving table. There’s still time to plant tulip bulbs in the fenced garden and daffodil bulbs out where the deer go, plain, brown, lumpy bulbs that will burst out in twirly skirts come spring.

The milkweed pods are bursting out right now, into their world of angel wings, fluffy seeds setting sail. Underground their rhizones are spreading too, so that next year there will be more food for butterflies. Spring is the time of new starts, but fall is the time of setting up for them.

The herb garden will be the last to go. Lavender, thyme, and mint intertwine as though they’re keeping each other warm, and there will be plenty of sage for the Thanksgiving turkey platter. But that’s for later – after the birthday celebration. First I get the cake, and the candle, and I get to make a wish. They say to be careful what we wish for, but with the state the world is in, perhaps all well-wishers need to throw caution to the wind.

Faced with all that sadness in the world, unsure that anyone has a real solution, for now I’ve settled on doing what I can to try not to make things worse. The frost was late this year, but now the season of gorgeous, gold landscapes is coming to a close. I’m cleaning up for winter, but differently from how I used to do it. Cleaning up used to mean cutting down dead flower stalks, clearing out brush, removing leaves, and basically making the yard and garden ready for spring planting. But spring planting is months away, and meanwhile there are plenty of small creatures who need shelter for the winter. The solitary bees native to North America will hibernate in spent stems; non-migratory birds find protection from wind and storms in untrimmed brush; leaf litter is a natural mulch, protecting many overwintering plants. It’s a gardener’s Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.

I did empty the pots on the deck that held zinnias and cosmos, so I could plant bulbs in them. They will look, for months, as though nothing is happening there, but if all goes well they will poke green noses up in March and flowers in April, proof that things happen sometimes when we can’t tell. This is a cheering thought.

It’s chilly to sit out in the woods now, but calm. I learned from my friend Kari to gather some of the beautiful fallen leaves and press them in the pages of old phone books. Come Thanksgiving I will tumble them out to decorate my table. Kari says it’s nice if you forget one of the books, pick it up at random some time later, and find yourself in an unexpected shower of red and gold.

I also admit to cutting down a few spent flowers for arrangements. I brought in dried allium, sedum, and agastache from my garden, for this tableau. They dried themselves with no effort, and no phone books, on my part. I just left them out there till they looked like this, and then brought them in. Sometimes when you try that they get weatherbeaten and windblown. Sometimes you get lucky. I always make sure there are plenty left for the critters in the yard.

As I said, the frost was late this year. Last week it was 72 degrees here, but now there are snow flurries 50 miles to the north, and serious snow in the Upper Peninsula. The dusty miller by my front door, untouched by frost, makes a ghostly companion for some Halloween spirits. Dusty miller is a very tolerant plant, not sensitive to frost, not sensitive to drought, not picky about soil, and not tasty to deer. It’s also not a perennial in Michigan, but it carries our growing season into November with graceful persistence determined by its own nature. Unlike us, it has nothing to decide.