Sunday 24 August 2008

Low Light, High Hopes


"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..." Keats knew what to say, and although we're not supposed to even think that autumn is approaching, the tell-tale signs are there and I for one welcome them. "Oh don't say that" people say "We haven't even had a summer yet". Well I have, and not being one to lie about on a beach with seven million others I can't wait now to get the stove going with my new coffee maker perched on it, and the button sewn on to my blue serge pea jacket. It's not that I haven't enjoyed myself these last few weeks- the same rain that has thwarted my farming friends from safely gathering everything in has also meant that the countryside has kept greener and fresher than usual. And there have been some spectacularly cloudy skies, very good for photographs. So the farmers could all be grateful for that. I look out over my neighbours' manicured park (they're out there now under one of those big green umbrellas drinking Pimms) and up across the rougher pastures to the ironstone manor half-hidden in trees and shadowed by the gradually lowering sunlight. But the best thing, apart from the boys fishing snails out from under the shed in order to enlist them as Lego spaceship captains, are the restless swallows lining-up like music notes down the telephone wires. A tuneful ode to a coming autumn. Oh, and thankyou to Tess of the d'Urbervilles for letting me get near her tempting apple.

3 comments:

Affer said...

It is still Spring in Yorkshire, and the Emperor Penguins are only just getting the hatchlings out, in time for the Polar Bears to play with when they wake up from their long slumber......

I hope autumn only visits Leicesterhire over the next three months; we need SUN....Tess D'Urbevilles's Pear notwithstanding.

Philip Wilkinson said...

Oh I do look forward to the apple harvest. I had a great uncle who lived well into his nineties, and attributed his longevity to a daily portion of apple pie for breakfast.

Thud said...

After a couple of months in an extremely hot california I too am looking forward to autumn...and a good crop from my apple trees...last years cider was pretty good...mind you we just bottled the 06 vintage here and that promises to be spectacular.