Autumn – My Favourite Season for making jam and raspberry vodka

Autumn is my favourite season, especially on those perfect days of vivid blue skies, contrasting with the oranges and reds of the trees. The mornings have that lovely crisp feel to them and the smell of wood smoke makes me think of Bonfire night, sausages and onions, woolly jumpers and hot chocolate.

“Winter is an etching, Spring a watercolour, Summer an oil painting and Autumn a mosaic of them all” – Stanley Horowitz

I studied English Literature at A level – many moons ago and although a lot of the authors and poets we studied have faded from memory, I still love the poetry by John Keats. To Autumn was the final poem he wrote in a group of poems known as Keats’s “1819 odes”. The poem is full of rich imagery. I particularly love how the poem describes the progression of the season. It’s beautiful.  

To Autumn – By John Keats

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 cider-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

For me September is a bit like January, in that it is a time when I start to think about new beginnings. I get itchy feet as to what I can learn next. I have been described as a bit of a “butterfly” in that I tend to flit from one idea to another. Last week I embarked on a four week course on learning to crochet. I haven’t picked up a crochet hook (see I even know the lingo now!) in my life. I spent a lovely couple of hours learning basic stitches and managed to produce about an inch of respectable looking crochet. Not sure if I can remember how I did it. I was very impressed to see what can actually made in crochet, one lady was making an autumn style wreath featuring, leaves and hedgehogs – stunning!

A couple of Autumns ago my son and I decided to visit a National Trust property and took some beautiful photographs, using my new (at the time) digital camera. It has been in it’s case too long now, I should dust it down (literally) and try and capture some more autumnal pictures.