The last few weeks I’ve been looking for the best advice on how to put my garden to bed for the winter months ahead. This is the year I manage to be successful with one big, beautiful dahlia plant and I want to make sure I do everything I can not to kill the tubers so I can enjoy it again next year.

As I used the pitchfork to extract the dahlia tubers, I had a thought about the woman who ignited my love of gardens. It was my dear sister-in-law Joan, who was taken from us almost 18 years ago.

Joan’s gardens were masterpieces, after her diagnosis of cancer and knowing that she had only one garden season left to live, she turned her pain and grief into transforming her backyard into a living creation of love. When friends and family wanted to come and visit she’d asked if we would bring a plant she could add to her garden. Preferably our favorite plant.

When she was too tired to plant or weed, we’d show up with hoes and shovels and spades and take our direction from her. When the grandkids were very little, she bought kits for them to create stepping stones for garden paths.

In all the time we spent together that season she never mentioned that the garden was where she wanted her ashes scattered. I know she thought it would have been so difficult for us to discover that was her ultimate intent.

Joan and her husband never had children, it was their choice. She was extremely close to my daughters. So close that when they had babies, Joan would move in with them for a week. Her only goal was to make the new mothers as comfortable as possible. Gourmet meals were cooked, laundry was done, bathrooms and floors were spotless and refrigerators cleaned out. No yucky task was too much for Joan.

The pitchfork I used today to haul the dahlia tubers out of the ground was a wedding gift to my husband and I almost 19 years ago, from Joan and her husband. It’s funny how sometimes things can bring back such vivid memories.

As I put my garden to bed I think back to the fall of 2008, helping Joan put her gardens to bed not knowing that in a few short months that would be her final resting place.

But back to the garden I go, there are still peony plants that need to be cut down and dozens of other chores to do before winter sets in. But come spring when the fragrant hyacinths begin to bloom, I’ll think of Joan and how she gave me the confidence to create little gardens of my own