So, finally, summer is gone. We still have some warm, sunny days to come, but the mornings carry a misty chill and the afternoons, while mellow, are shorter and cool off quickly. Not that summer this year was much to write home about, being fairly damp, although June wasn’t too bad.
But, no, autumn is upon us. I have mixed feelings about this time of the year. I love the colours – the red, gold and auburn of the leaves, I love the low-lying mist as it shrouds the fields and river banks. I almost enjoy the chill as it reminds me of what is to come – the grim, bitter cold of winter. But for the moment, we still have the last lingering warmth of a tired, dying summer cloaked over the land. The cold claws of icy winter are some way off yet.
It is this time of the year that most brings back childhood memories. Memories of returning to school, and, oddly enough, games lessons. These are not good memories, but funnily enough they stick. Perhaps now I can look back knowing that I will not be forced onto the football pitch, so can eschew it with impunity. Although, in some respects, it toughened me up. Rebelling against not only the teaching establishment that seemed to think that team games were the only ones that existed and would be good for us, but also my peers, in my dislike of all school sanctioned games – not just football – helped me to hone my ability to say “no” and mean it. Certainly, I became a fierce individualist, rejecting the enforced collective wherever I found it. Appeals to my loyalty to the house or the school were wasted, for I had none.
It’s odd, but when I see the tinge of autumn in the dying leaves or the low-lying mists, these images come flooding back. It’s not anger or bitterness I feel, but a strange nostalgia for long lost youth and the battles I fought, I guess.
“I love the colours – the red, gold and auburn of the leaves, I love the low-lying mist as it shrouds the fields and river banks.”
Ditto, as a keen photographer. But despite having retired at the start of this year, I just can’t get the time free to vanish into the countryside – or anywhere else, for that matter – to actually go out and do some.
The thing I notice about getting older is that this used to be the longest season, a slow slog to Christmas with a patch of depression just after Guy Fawkes night because it was sooooo long to anything.
Now I barely have time to work out what I need to get ready for next spring before the snowdrops are out and it has all zipped past me.
Autumn, the season of next year’s wall calendars. Have a happy Equinox.
Down on the allotment, all the “fruits” are ripening – I’m collecting a kilo of tomatoes every day, on average ….
Apples are just coming up, the later raspberries are delicious.
Mellow fruitfulness indeed.