Jeremy.

If ever there were an opposite of a summer person, it is me. Summer is a season of endurance, in which I must cram myself into clothes I don’t feel comfortable in, and hide away in the air conditioning waiting for it to be over.

I’m a fall guy. I love the fall. I love how ominous it sounds: the fall. Autumn’s a pretty good word for it too.

It’s a season of relief, when I can finally put on a hoodie and comfy clothes to enjoy a fire on chilly nights, while the days are still warm enough to open the windows or get outside. I love the crispness of the air. The liminality of the atmosphere as nature prepares for the long sleep, and the deep, dark shadows cast by a sun sinking lower on the horizon. The promise of it is the only thing that gets me through the grueling days of summer.

Above all things, I love Halloween. Three years ago, when my husband and I were ready to move out of the growing bustle of downtown Denver, the prospect of a quiet house in the woods of New England, with its stunning fall foliage in the spookiest corner of the country, was an easy sell for us.

Over the years, I’ve let my love for Halloween and “the fall” creep, pushing the decorations further and further up the calendar until it consumed Thanksgiving and Christmas. In place of Santa and reindeer, I had ghosts and skeletons dressed up in pretty lights and frosted snowflakes: “Spookmas”.

This year, in the ultimate act of terrorism upon summertime, I declared it “Summerween”, dragging my ghosts all the way back to July. I even found this awesome inflatable pumpkin pool and watched summer slasher movies in the sun.

So why is it that now, as we enter the final days of summer, am I so bummed to see it go? Why does the idea of putting up Halloween decorations this year fill me with dread? To the point that now I’m the one annoyed with people like me.

The obvious conclusion would be that I found a way to make summer not miserable for myself via Summerween, but truthfully, I’m overselling how much Summerweening I actually did. It was a thing I started, enjoyed for a day or two, but ultimately found… I didn’t need it?

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It was a quiet summer here. I spent most of my time gardening.

In my adult life, I’ve never lived in a place with a yard to take care of, and always seemed to live in apartments that were too dark for plants, so I knew exactly nothing about gardening when we moved here. I had no idea what any of my plants even were. I couldn’t tell what were weeds, or what was supposed to be there. I thought the mounds of invasive vines swallowing my trees were just the prettiest things. I had no concept of how overgrown the land we’d purchased was, or the work that would go into taming it. I thought moving to New England would just be pumpkin spice and cardigan vibes, the land could sort itself out.

Our first season here was one of neglect, listening to bad gardening advice that affirmed my desire to be lazy. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves besieged with pests, and invasives murdering our native or desirable plants. This would not be sustainable.

I’ve since fallen down a rabbit hole in educating myself, obsessive really, and this year was the first that I’ve gone into a season feeling like I have a general idea of what I’m doing. Finally understanding the rhythm of what’s happening each season, I came armed with a plan, ready to move beyond reacting to what’s already here, and into a phase of deliberate structure, aiming to put my own mark on the place.

I had a lot of time to plan for it, too. Winter of 2024 was absolutely brutal for me and felt like it would never end. People warned me about the winters in New England, but I shrugged them off. I loved winter in Colorado, and fully expected to love it anywhere else.

What I hadn’t accounted for was how dark a winter could be, or how big of an impact the darkness would have on me. Winter days in New England are short, with sunsets at 4:30pm, and overcast more often than not. I live in a valley in the woods with mostly north facing windows, and towering trees shading the rest. On a cloudy day, I can find myself sitting in pitch blackness by 3pm.

It wasn’t the cold that got me, it was the dark.

In the initial years, I tried to make light of it, again, through my love of all things spooky. Maybe this is where the creep of Halloween into other seasons began. I put out my decorations early, and left them up late. I set up home automations to light it up and make it fun. My favorite is a dire sounding sunset announcement: all my lights flash red as the speakers blast the siren sound from Silent Hill, with a broadcasted announcement from the smart speakers:

Last year, we picked up celebrating solstice instead of Christmas, a festival filled with lights and evergreen decorations that mark the turn of the longest night of the year. We held an open house for our neighbors, offering hot stew, coffee, and sweet cakes to anyone seeking a little company to brighten their day. I wasn’t expecting anyone to turn up given that it was mere days before Christmas Eve, but we found ourselves with a full house. Neighbors came and went through the day, enjoying the warm fire and drinks as they caught up with one another. We tucked our wishes for the new year into a yule log to burn in the fire, and watched in silence, manifesting our hopes into the atmosphere with the drift of spark and ash. It was a communal acknowledgement that yeah, this sucks, but we’re getting through it together. The commiseration of it made it easier, somehow.

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It worked. Until it didn’t.

The festivities ended, the lights came down, and the joy wrapped up along with it. The silence of January closed in like a hand around the neck. Despite the slow lengthening of days, I felt more a prisoner to the darkness than ever before.

January always feels like a hangover after a bacchanal, when the streets empty and everyone vanishes back into their homes to resume the grind. But this time it coincided with a tense change in presidential administration. Rather than returning to business as usual, it felt like everyone had retreated into hiding. Tech lords threw their overwhelming support to the shift in power, and our usual means of connecting felt more charged and hostile than ever. I deactivated my social accounts and resolved to keep my head down, I couldn’t do this again, I wouldn’t let myself spiral. But no matter how much I tried to avoid it, I couldn’t escape this feeling of darkness.

Changes from the administration came swiftly and piled up overnight like the snow outside. The feeling of powerlessness grew, and my motivation plummeted. We didn’t know where this was headed, or where we would be in six months. All the pursuits and projects that usually drive me, that give me purpose, suddenly felt like pointless, silly little things. The ideas of a man from a time that doesn’t exist any more.

I drifted aimlessly indoors, another shadow in winter, every morning waking up to fresh drifts of snow further sealing me in. The still brief days blended together with nothing to note for them but a discarded pile of breaking news alerts I could do nothing about. My lack of established local community or strong friendships in a new place became more apparent than ever before. Despite this, I isolated myself further, doing little to reach out to the connections I’d severed when I unplugged my social media accounts.

I’d told myself I wouldn’t spiral, yet there I was, spinning in a freefall anyway. One morning, I noticed the green tips of scilla coming in through the snow outside, and I realized that the only solace I would find would be in the planning for brighter days ahead. So plan I did.

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Spring is what would fix me.

I sorted myself out, sat myself up straight, and created a ludicrously comprehensive Notion database structuring exactly what must be done for my garden, at what time, along with projects for each month. I woke up the potted annuals I’d stowed away to overwinter, and began my seeds. Fresh buds of growth flushed the trees and shrubs outside as the plants stirred to life, and I came back to life along with them. The oppressive weight of winter began to lift as each day grew brighter.

But that stubborn winter of 2024 had one last, spiteful swing left in it. Just as I thought we were in the clear: an unexpected deep freeze, another layer of snow. I watched from my windows as the fresh buds withered and died before my very eyes. The cold was relentless, and I sat trapped once again indoors, Notion projects rotting away in my pocket. The hope of spring had been halted and reset.

When this second, late wave of winter finally melted away, it was a race against time. Spring is always a busy period in the garden, and doubly so when you lose a month of it. While I rushed to prepare beds and tackle time sensitive tasks, nature was in just as much of a hurry to catch up, rapidly attempting a second flush of growth to replace the first they had lost.

Meanwhile, travel arrangements that were set in motion the previous year fell directly in the middle of it, both traveling back home to Colorado as well as hosting family here. I needed the reconnection after months spent in isolation, but I found myself resenting the disruption and additional tasks to do. Nothing was ready, and I had no time.

And it was true: one day, while our high temperatures were still barely in the 50’s and I was still rotating potted plants indoors-and-out to harden them off, warnings were issued of a major heatwave, with heat indexes soaring to 110°F. Suddenly: it was summer.

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I didn’t get to all my plans for the season.

I’d wanted to do a full revamp of our enclosed patio area, fixing up rotting wood, putting in windows to extend its useable season, transplanting the overgrown shrubs around it, and putting in a new bed. I only got as far as fixing the rotted wood, and some paint. I still need to go back to do another coat.

My seedlings didn’t make it to the garden in time and expired, forcing me to start over. In the end, the harvest I got from them seemed hardly worth the effort. Some vegetables never produced at all.

Instead of adding new beds, my time was unexpectedly consumed with recovering from the winter damage wrought upon my established plants. My rhododendrons were decimated, as well as many others. As I took care of one problem, another arose in their weakened state. Diseases and pests I’d never had to deal with before impeded my attempts at rejuvenation.

The hydrangeas bloomed late, and were swiftly burnt to a crisp by the sudden swing into hot temperatures before their foliage hardened off. My roses, that I’d put so much effort into clearing of diseases and pests, bent and sagged under the weight of heavy summer rains that dashed their blooms to the ground before I had a chance to enjoy them. The flowering annuals I’d overwintered have only just begun to bloom.

If I required any validation in my feelings that this past winter was certifiably The Worst™, I need look no further than the state of my plants. They’d suffered too, and are ending the season still bearing the scars of it.

Today, the end of summer feels so sudden, and the season too short. I’ve only just begun, and already my Notion database of plans must be closed to wait another year. As I get older, I become more aware of how finite my remaining supply of years really are, and I don’t want to wait.

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Despite the setbacks, you may be surprised to hear that I had a really wonderful summer, possibly the best of my life.

It seems like such a nonsense thing to say, given how uneventful and domestic it reads. I didn’t do a lot of travel, or any of the partying that once defined the season for me. I kept to myself. After the initial heatwave passed, the rest of the season was relatively mild. I guess that’s one good thing that came out of the long winter that preceded it. I was able to spend a lot of time outside, in my garden, with a good book and music playing softly in the background.

It took a brutal winter and crippling depression, but I think I finally appreciate summer. I’ve learned to savor the longer days, a gift of time for working toward my humble goals, and time still to relax outside when I’m done. The heat is worth braving for another chance to catch the local wildlife foraging on the land I tend for them, and it isn’t so bad when you’re joined by friends for food and drinks out on the deck. I can bask in the sun without yearning for a season when I can hide in a hoodie again, because I know there will be plenty of time for that later.

Now I understand why New England is as well known for its coastal summer aesthetic as it is for autumn, despite the window for it being so short. The people here go hard on the summertime, understanding that the time we’re given to bask in the sun is precious, and it’s better to risk some heat than to miss it entirely.

It was a summer I spent getting to know myself, and feeling attuned with the land that I steward, taking comfort in seeing our struggles reflected back to one another. Finding a way I can have a tangible impact on the world around me, and becoming okay with that impact being smaller than the lofty dreams I’d envisioned in my youth. I may not be able to do much about what’s going on in the world, but I can clear the way for new trees to grow. Trees for future generations to enjoy, a long time from now. Maybe someone else, who hates the summer and lives for the fall? I hope they appreciate the deep reds I’ve added to their backyard autumn view.

The equinox approaches. The trees are starting to turn, and my garden is winding down. I’m late getting my Halloween decorations up, but I keep holding on for just one more week.

I can’t shake this feeling that there’s no time to waste, but I must take a cue now from my plants, who are tired, and are ready for a rest. Together, we’ll survive another winter.