Each tree has a mind of its own. We have a pear tree whose leaves stay green all winter, and don’t fall off until the new leaves come out in the spring. This year we trimmed it way back, and its leaves are turning bright yellow and falling.

In the garden, the garlic shoots are appearing. They whiz past the tender mustard greens. The nice thing about greens this time of year is that they grow slowly. Each day you can walk the rows and see the subtle changes from day to day.

The stellar jays and pileated woodpeckers have made their mark on the apples. How many pecks can an apple take before it falls to the ground?

Plant a few kale plants, and you are guaranteed greens all winter long. The colder it gets, the sweeter they become.

Against a slate November sky, ceanothus blossoms wait in vain for bumblebees to come tickle their blue petals. Most of the bumblebees have passed away. The surviving bumblebee gynes have all gone to bed, burrowing into the ground to pass the winter months in peace, until they wake in the spring to bring bumblebees back into the world. Meanwhile, noisy Stellar Jays make frequent forays into the apple trees to peck at the few remaining fruit.

The first of November solves a mystery. Where are some of the hens laying their eggs now? At the end of last week the daily egg count dropped precipitously. I found their new nesting spot behind a bale of hay.

By late afternoon, the clouds break enough to bathe the pond in gold. The towering cottonwoods are at peak color. On days like this, when I make tofu, I should call it “Golden Tofu”.

My gardening companions always have plenty to say. They would prefer I spend all day in the garden. They wouldn’t mind me sleeping with them either. When they hear me come out of the house, they quack, “Hey, you, you’re coming to see us, aren’t you?”

Ducks are the comedians of the bird world. They seem to tell each other jokes and laugh all day. The world is a much better place than we can imagine. A handful of ducks will show you that.

Slice a colossal chioggia beet vertically and you get a piece of art in every slice. These slices are destined for a pot of borscht. With chioggia beets, you don’t get a deep red borscht, but it tastes just as good.

An onion I found hiding among the weeds, revealed four developing buds inside. Grow your own food, and you are freed from the tyranny of standards. Grocers and produce buyers demand that the produce they buy adhere to rigid standards of size, color, shape, and weight, which means that any onion you buy in a supermarket has been stripped of any personality. Only the ones which conform to a rigid standard of what an onion is supposed to look like make it onto the store shelves. But grow a row of onions and you get to pick them at all stages of growth, and enjoy an endless variety of sizes, colors, and shapes.

While prepping another bed for garlic, I dug up some garlic I missed pulling up this year. It had already sprouted, sending magical white roots deep into the cool earth. There is more root than bulb. You have to admire a plant that can grow robustly when the earth has chilled.

Back into the cool earth the garlic will go, row upon row. Underneath the surface, their magical roots will spread and intertwine, making a network more intricate and complicated than you can imagine. The next time you walk past a bed of garlic, picture those magical white roots spread far and wide underneath the surface.