Autumn: A Retrospective

Time scampers by us light-footed, while we are busy doing work. It was only this morning as I opened my curtains to an inexplicable dusting of white snow that I realised: Autumn has come headlong through its part, and I’ve not made comment on it here.

I haven’t missed a minute of it in the real world – I watch the leaves fastidiously, I rummage about for fungi, I even swift-finger my way through the seasonal crafts and chores, watching the skies for our departing friends, but it all swoops so quickly towards the Mid-Winter chaos, and I forget, sometimes, to take a moment.

So, here is one bright quilt of Autumn: a retrospective of the season in which I’m always happily too busy to whistle! I’ve planted trees, I’ve hand-dug landscaping mistakes of the past, I’ve repaired windows and painted walls – and I’m still pulling up that infernal bush thicket, which I thought would be a nice job to get my teeth into two years ago…

I’ve sown seeds and planted bulbs, but for now, colour.

All photos by The Compulsive Gardener

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, mouldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.