To Autumn

I love Autumn… the leaves changing, the crisp air after Tennessee humidity, pulling out sweaters and scarves… There is also a mystery and depth of emotion to the season that begins pulling me in as September fashion magazines feature plaids and deep jewel tones on their covers and carries me through the pumpkins of Halloween and laden tables of Thanksgiving. I love it!

This year our sugar maples were a beautiful, vivid yellow tinged with red & orange and backed by many days of brilliant blue sky. Their color began to shift into orange and red just before they started to drop in earnest this past weekend.

Trying out the new PhotoshopMobile application on my iPhone to intensify saturation, I came up with these photos of our back yard.

In Autumns past I would celebrate my favorite poet, John Keats, by throwing a John Keats Birthday Party at my house. He was born on October 31st and so on Halloween night a group of us would cluster in my living room and feast on Fall foods; homemade vegetable soup, corn muffins, hot spiced cider and apple pie for dessert. Then – whether they liked it or not – everyone would read a Keats poem. For some friends – I’m not looking at you, D. – this took some cajoling.

So, I’ll finish this post with my absolute favorite Keats poem -

To Autumn
by John Keats
(written in Winchester on 19 September 1819)

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.

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.

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.

Auntie J.