When we moved to 45th Street many years ago, I began to hear rumors of a Garden Club. As a gardener, this interested me, and I had visions of an army of neighbors, remnants of dirt under their fingernails, swapping bulbs and bemoaning dollar weed. I looked for signs and notices about meetings, but Garden Club proved to be elusive. A few months ago — after 23 years of inquiry and casting about — I learned that one had to be invited to Garden Club, so lacking any semblance of class about matters of the earth, I asked a member to invite me. The location was not disclosed, and as she pulled in front of the house to pick me up, Chris asked if I knew the first rule of Garden Club: You do not talk about Garden Club. “And the second?,” I asked. “YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT GARDEN CLUB,” he said forcefully.

So here I am, breaking the rules, and telling you about Garden Club. The spread was lavish, and the food remarkable, and the members unfailingly polite. And after I got introduced, the discussion immediately turned to limiting membership. (While I like to believe that there was no causal connection, I am not making that up.)

Garden Club that night featured a local floral designer, who looked about 10 months pregnant. I remembered those days, and especially the time I almost asphyxiated trying to tie my shoe. But she was smarter than I was, and sat liberally and panted only occasionally and sweated profusely, and despite maneuvering about with another human being tucked underneath her shirt, she made the most lovely floral arrangement that I had ever seen. It was large and irregular and undulating. It had roses. It had grasses. It had mums. It had seed pods and vines and leaves and berries. It had any number of things that she had found over by railroad tracks and growing on her house and in a neglected portion of a neighbor’s yard.

And there she was, brimming with life, telling us to embrace the withering of plants and the loveliness of their dying in the midst of autumn. “Find the beauty in it,” she said. “Don’t fight the decline and treasure it for what it is,” she reminded us.

When you have a beloved dog dying of cancer, solace comes from unlikely places. This was one of them. A more likely place was my friend Jennifer, a veterinarian, who told me that Buddy was not sad and stressed about what was happening to him. I shouldn’t be, either. So between these two things, I have viewed his last days, however many of them that there are, as a very sweet time. There is no irritation when he greets me at the door after a long day, insisting on a walk right now. There is plenty of human food to share. There is enough time to scratch. There are patches of sun waiting for him when I open the shutters. There are any number of photos to be taken, as he awaits family dinner every night, standing guard in the same spot for the last nine years.

Or as he enjoys a super-premium bone selected for him by his grandfather.

Buddy is a fixture along a narrow swath of our neighborhood — his walking route — and I have not hesitated to tell people that he is dying. It is not as morbid as it sounds, for I ask my neighbors to shower him with affection. They oblige, bending for a hug, an extended scratch.

And through it all, the old chestnut circulates in my brain: We are all dying every day. And in this very sweet time with my old and ailing dog, I wondered: Why don’t we live like it?

I thought about this all Thanksgiving. I walked outside a lot — one of life’s little pleasures — and I loved looking at the leaves. I took botany courses in college (I had no desire to work any job science-related), and knowing the volume of Miracle-Gro that coursed in my blood, I figured it might be helpful. It was not, other than sending me on a life-long search for a green T-shirt worn daily by the lab TA, Shirley: It had white fern leaves, and in the middle, in bad 70s script, it said CIRCLE OF FRONDS. But as I looked at the leaves, I thought about their crazy efforts at photosynthesis to create chlorophyll, and their backslide in autumn, which allowed the chlorophyll to recede, the green to decline, and the other chemicals — and their very bright colors — to emerge.

The leaves became yellow.

The leaves became red.

And I loved the notion that after working so very hard to stay green, the leaves — at least chemically speaking — let it all hang out for one glorious season.

The Georgia Bulldogs have not been having a glorious season, and Chris and I were there yesterday to see the loss to Georgia Tech. I purchased the tickets a few months ago, and as the game grew closer, I held them out as a self-offered bribe not to complain. The holidays are stressful, even if they are all about giving thanks, and I figured a baby step toward genuine gratitude was to be perfectly accepting of one’s lot in life. So I kept my mouth shut, and smiled a lot, and directed my loving kindness meditation to any irksome situation. I think the trick of not complaining is simply not to complain, despite the obstacles thrown in one’s way, and I found it much easier than I anticipated. This was embarrassing.

Embarrassment and all, I could enjoy the football game with a clear conscience. So Chris and I loaded up, drove over to Athens on a perfect November morning, and found our seats. They were on the third row of the highest tier, in a small corner of the stadium with space for only 33 patrons, the Jumbotron obscured from view. It was perhaps another metaphor for modern life — the satisfaction of having to watch the game, rather than the replays, hype videos, and karaoke sing-a-longs — and the view of the field was perfect.

The man sitting next to me reminded me of Boomhauer from “King of the Hill,” and next to Boomhauer sat his friend Chuck, a Georgia Tech fan. If I cannot sit next to friends at a game, Boomhauer and Chuck the GT fan would be my next choice, for they were hilarious. They would call for flags for “unwanted forward motion.” They would try to out-sing each other. They would call each other cry babies. They watched the entire game, never leaving once. Boomhauer included me in his high fives. He told me Kentucky was beating Louisville. I told him that LSU had hired Coach O.

But everything in the game was going great for the Georgia Bulldogs until 3:30 left to play. Then all hell broke loose. Nothing went right. Receivers dropped balls. Holes in the line opened. Completions were impossible. Grown men cried. Chuck the GT fan grew gleeful. Boomhauer grew introspective.

And I thought again of the floral designer and of Jennifer the vet’s advice. You never know how things are going to turn out until the bitter end. Why be stressed? Why be sad? You can’t control it. Why not make the most of what you have left? Why not look at it as an explosion of color and beauty? Why not make jokes and reach out  and make connections and walk outside and not complain and realize just how sweet every single moment of your time is?

ALC

P.S. — To everyone who has reached out about Buddy, thank you. In his quest to eat more bacon, I have fed him small pieces in the morning, telling him that it is from you.