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Fall was my mother’s favorite season. Her love for fall carried to the color of clothes she loved best—browns, oranges and beige, along with some evergreen hues.

This fall I have been remembering my mother, who passed away two years ago. Today I found myself in a beautiful place surrounded by lush displays of flowers, open green spaces and inviting walkways. Outdoors I felt comfortable but inside I could only feel the pain of the times I had taken my mother there during the last two years of her life.

I was in downtown Rochester at Mayo Clinic with my husband, who was having outpatient surgery. While waiting for him I left the building to find lunch. I might have headed to the subway, but the outdoors had lured me as I looked through the wide glass windows of the Gonda building.

I stayed outside as long as I could by the Peace Plaza fountain eating my bag lunch purchased from Salad Brothers. Later I sat on cool granite steps in the sunlight near a landscaped plaza beside the Mayo building. Then I moved to a bench just outside the building until the buzzer in my pocket started vibrating and flashing.

Although the extensive floral landscaping was beautiful and largely untouched by a recent frost, I was relieved to get in my car and drive us back home.

Give me my messy jumble of potted plants to water and my odd jungle of perennials any day.

As I sat in the Peace Plaza I had noticed the ginkgo trees growing and remembered a long time ago when I had a summer job counting and mapping trees on a college campus. It had been a perfect sort of summer job for a college kid fresh with knowledge of tree identification. Although my grade in surveying class had been average, I knew my pace (two steps) equaled five feet.

I used my feet to plot the positions of the trees and the circumference of their branches’ drip line. I remember the ginkgoes growing down by the botany building and by Morrill Hall, near the planning department office where I worked.

Although I enjoy fall colors, I admit my favorite season is spring. I wear fall colors during the fall season, so I can accompany them with some of my mother’s jewelry. But I really prefer purple—the color of spring flowers and my namesake, the iris.

We enjoyed the drive back home with the bright-yellowed shades of fall all around us, while wondered about the colors up north, where we will be visiting our cabin next weekend.

Fall brings to me a sense of mourning for the end of a growing season. The first killing frost brought an end to bushels of tomatoes and the bounty of peppers and beans. Soon the potted plants I have been lavishing with water all summer will die. Each year I wonder more why our growing season is so shallow and why all of us tolerate it, living here in Minnesota.

My small tomato patch in the backyard survived the first frost and is still producing, but another deeper frost is predicted for this weekend. Will two layers of plastic protect them through a series of cool days? Or is this the end already?

Can I extend the growing season just a bit more by moving my potted herbs into a plastic greenhouse or has the season for choosing a few survivors to spend their winter inside the house already arrived?

A week has passed since starting this writing.

The fall sequence of colors has deepened. When we arrived at our lake home in northern Wisconsin last weekend, although it was dark, I first noticed the drift of crisp leaves near the house. The next morning I realized most of the yellows from the birches and maples had already fallen.

Even as we were driving there, before early dark started settling in, I had to acknowledge the early fall colors had passed. Now we were viewing the deepening fall oak colors of scarlet and bronze.

During that weekend, the real killing frost hit back home. Even sheltered by a plastic greenhouse, my tender green basil plants had succumbed. I found most of their leaves withered after returning. I’d carefully sorted and brought some plants indoors, in addition to sheltering geraniums and other potted herbs in the greenhouse. The tomatoes under plastic are still alive—just barely.

I miss my mother, especially during the fall, and I mourn the loss of another growing season. Only recently I realized how short the growing season actually is here in Minnesota. Six decades of living here and I finally figured it out!

During the next six months I will gallantly try to keep herbs & geraniums alive indoors, fighting spider mites and limited light. But there will be new plants, started from seeds indoors in flats and under florescent lights.

Rebirth will give hope for another spring when tiny green shoots push forth from thawing earth and lovely little purple flowers bloom announcing a new growing season.

But fall gives me a rest from the toil of growing, watering and harvesting. I can allow myself to relax a bit and look around, enjoying the last colors of autumn.