August 22, 2009

If the leaves are changing colour can Autumn be too far away?

While out this past few days I've noticed quite a few trees with turning leaves, most especially the chestnuts. There has also been a different smell to the air. A mix of damp leaves, soil and stuff for lack of a better word. A smell that to me spells Autumn. Autumn my favourite time of year. A season that tugs at me and says "come outside and enjoy my bounty".
A time of fruiting trees where elderberries dance on the stem and blackberries drop to stain the ground below. Where damsons pucker your mouth when you taste them and their relatives the sloes start to change colour. Sloes, sloe gin - yummy. Although they need frost to make them ready to use.
Apples too are now fattening on the bough, I had my first discovery apple yesterday and it was gorgeous. Then too there are plums, I love plum crumble. In fact I love all the fruits as crumbles it just seems right for Autumn puddings.
Elderberry makes a great rob. A cordial that is perfect for sore throats, colds and as a general pick me up.
I love Keats poem To Autumn and thought you might like to be reminded of it.

TO AUTUMN.

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How funny, I've just been in the park with the dogs and noticed the same thing, that autumnal smell even though today has felt like midsummer again, and we found acorns on the trees and saw horse chestnuts too.
The poem brings back memories of school, learning poetry off by heart in class and my friend and I trying to test each other as we rode home on our bikes through the country lanes.
Hope you are feeling better and enjoying the fabulous autumnal jacket you knitted!

Charity said...

Autumn is my favourite time of year, too - I always find myself in a state of anticipation at this time of year, waiting to see it all unfold again. :o)

laoi gaul~williams said...

we definetely have autumn on our minds!

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