The Rhythm of the Year

 

For the time being summer has deserted us and the rains have come … hopefully not for too long  … but if the season has turned then I am hoping for an Indian Summer … when it is unseasonably warm … dry and hazy … an autumn heatwave … something to keep our spirits up during the headlong rush into winter.

There is harmony In Autumn, and a lustre in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Slowly the year turns … the end of one season … the beginning of another.  The days are cooler … the nights are longer.  When does it change from being late summer to autumn.  The garden shows these changes … the flowers are slowly going to seed … no longer full and lush … everything looking slightly bedraggled … maybe sending  out one or two late flowers to show willing … but they seem to know their time is up.  Berries are forming and starting to ripen on the trees … food for grateful birds in the winter cold.  Apples are ripening … plums becoming full and juicy … blackberries in the hedgerows are  shining  like purple jewels waiting   to stain your fingers and tongues … the best of autumn fruits.  Hips and haws are turning red, elderberries  drip from the bushes and hazel and chestnuts harden and brown … so much bounty  amongst the leaves of gold and yellow.  But not yet … not quite.

Autumn begins with a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and chilled.  The season comes full with the first frost, the disappearance of migrating birds, and the harvesting of the season's last crops. ~Glenn Wolff and Jerry Dennis

 

In the garden Autumn is indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil.  And at no season, save perhaps daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November.  ~Rose G. Kingsley

The hazy, cloudless skies of Indian Summer.
Leaves scurrying down the street before the wind.
The cold shiver from an arctic blast.
Indian Summer.
The last warmth of the sun.
Chilly mornings and glorious warm afternoons.
The touch of frost on grass and window pane.
The smell of burning leaves.
Keith C. Heidorn

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.  ~ Edwin Way Teale

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season
more remarkable for biting winds than general breezes.
Autumn is the mellower season,
and what we lose in flowers,
we more than gain in fruits.
Samuel Butler

Like Jen at Muddy Boot Dreams said in her last post Postcards from the Edge of Summer ‘ I’m lingering in summer for as long as I can.’ I wish I could agree, but she lives over the water where the summers are short and fierce, here in the UK we gently drift into autumn, hardly recognising its approach until it is upon us.  Let’s hope for a few more weeks of gentle warmth, working in the garden, harvesting crops, picking a few last flowers for the house before we start thinking ahead, buying bulbs for a spring display – no, I’m not ready to let summer go either.