Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

by Esmerelda Weatherwax (Nov. 2008)

 
I love the smell of autumn. There is a tinge of bonfire to it but mainly it is leaves and wet earth and crisp air mingled. The leaves fall down around you like so much copper confetti. Then I shuffle through the piles on the path kicking them up into the air.
 

I love that line in the 60s hit by Noel Harrison, “And the autumn leaves are turning to the colour of her hair” in Windmills of Your Mind. Does anybody other than me remember him in The Girl from Uncle? And the Kinks sang Autumn Almanac.
 
I like shiny conkers and conker fights. Mushrooms and fungi springing up literally overnight.
 


Soon I must take my geranium pots into safety from early morning frost.
 
The RSPB reserve reports that the summer birds are on their way south. Others are on their way here from the Arctic of Siberia for the winter. I remember standing on the Norfolk coast one October and watching great flocks wheeling overhead one after the other all heading south but unable to recognise anything other than that some were geese, probably Brent geese, heading for the river estuaries of Essex. The Canada goose is breeding and thriving in England to the point of being a nuisance (cf grey squirrel above) but the smaller Brent geese are autumn visitors.
 
I expect preparations for Diwali and Sukkot are tinged with the sights, sounds and smells of autumn in India and elsewhere. Harvest festival in Australia and New Zealand will be in March or possibly April. And their Christmas preparations shortly will have a summer air, of heat and the barbie on the beach.
 


The Byrds’ folk song, “Turn, Turn, Turn” is a little hackneyed but the words are true. I like the seasons and I like the cycle of the year. 
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