Not even fall yet, but let's just put my garden to bed right now. (And what has the BadKitten taught my chief garden staffer?)

Author's note: Today, September 7, 2015, is a major holiday at our house. Benjamin BadKitten is ten years old and celebrating his Labor Day birthday by committing no labor whatsoever.

I eagerly ripped off the August calendar page this week. It's time to move forward from heat and smoke into the red, gold and bronze of September. On Tuesday morning I smiled at the back-to-school photos of children on Facebook, carrying new backpacks and wearing still-spotless sneakers. With a mix of joy and melancholy, I thought of our son and daughter decades ago, as they paused at their classroom doors and looked back at me with wobbly smiles before they took the next steps to becoming big kids.

The beginning of the school year is more of a red-letter marker for me than New Year's day – filled with plans, important dates and deadlines, long to-do lists, and a shift from afternoons in my garden to longer writing sessions at my computer. And there is a cozy attic room in my mind that I've already peeked into. I store holiday memories in there: the golden fragrance of a fat turkey roasting, an autumn centerpiece on our holiday table, set with my grandmother's china, and the laughter of three generations of family waiting for pumpkin pie with extra whipped pie. Then, quickly, the door opens farther to the bright glow of the holiday lights my husband hangs from the eaves and weaves through our shrubbery, the green scent of the Christmas tree that touches our ceiling, bright wrapping paper and ribbons on the table, and the joyous rush of rehearsals for our church's Christmas pageant, which I write and direct. Ideas for that pageant script already have floated down from the attic room and taken center stage in my mind, because a cast of kids, from preschoolers to high school, will expect roles that reflect their personalities, show their humor and goodness, and include their requests for a slightly creative gathering in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.

This year I'm more willing than usual to start shutting down my gardens for a long dormancy. The summer drought and wildfire smoke not only affected my vegetable and flower beds, but my own confidence, too. I made some big mistakes this summer, the result of impetuous gardening, and am feeling quite discouraged. By allowing volunteer sunflower seeds to sprout and grow in the tomato and broccoli beds, I ruined the possibility of successful crops. (With my history of vegetable gardening, the “possibility” of success is as definite as I can hope for.) Our neighbors' gardens seem to have thrived through the heat and smoke. This week my husband attended a meeting with a friend of ours, who asked him to bring me one of her home-grown tomatoes. It was a Brandywine, I think, and so plump, juicy and gorgeous that I wanted to keep it as horticultural art. But we ate it as the star of a dinner salad, and I savored every tangy-sweet bite. It wasn't easy, because I kept comparing that perfect tomato to the thick-skinned, pallid little orange golf balls I'd harvested from my own plants.

It's me, of course. I am apparently not equipped with the combination of self-discipline, preparation and follow-through that healthy veggie crops require. I've used red plastic, wrap-around trays to aid watering and warmth for the tomatoes, and found no difference between the red-trayed wonders and the ones I allowed to go commando. I've let big, skulking sunflowers invade the beds, because I love feeding birds and find joy in the cheerful flower heads. (Being able to grow a big-honker-anything, even a sunflower that could grow in gravel, is a cheap ego booster.) I let the neighborhood bunny use our veggie beds as an all-you-can-eat buffet, because I can't imagine not feeding a hungry little animal. (Just ask the squirrel that hangs out in our apple tree, for whom I regularly buy big bags of unsalted raw peanuts.)

My personal staff has not helped to raise the garden odds in my favor, either. I employ a frail and elderly Old English sheepdog (retired now, but still able to pee on the grass and in the flower beds;) a chief of staff aptly named Tessa the Vague, who still has trouble finding the garden, and a chief-staffer-in-exile, Benjamin BadKitten, who poops in the blueberry bed. When I demoted Benjamin and sent Tessa up the Rozen corporate ladder, I expected a sweet companion, peaceably settled near me in the garden as I worked (but not too close, because she is not sure she is acquainted with me.) Now, after a few weeks of observing the effects of the changeover, I'm worried. On the few recent days when the fire smoke has cleared, I did some work in several gardens. Tessa knew how to find each of those locations, but I did not see her at all, even though she had followed me (in her vague, meandering way) outside. She could have set out for the side yard and ended up in Kooskia, so I slowly circled our yard, checking shrubbery, flowers, raised beds, and the compost pile (not, unfortunately, an inconceivable possibility.) I finally found her, asleep, under a chair on the patio. When she heard me approach, she blinked. “I am taking my afternoon break,” she seemed to murmur. “My new best friend Benjamin said that now that I am chief garden staffer, I am entitled to four 15-minute breaks every hour. He said you can do the math.”