After slower rhythms in summer, autumn is a rush. The sort of rush where eventually you look up and the leaves have all fallen and you wonder when that happened.
But every year has its variations and it’s been warmer for longer this year. Instead of scurrying through wet and windy days, there have been brighter days too, with warm sun and piles of earth-scented leaves. I enjoyed rediscovering the forgotten musky-sweet smell of an oak tree and scattered acorns. And I particularly enjoyed the riot of autumn colours collected together on one rowan tree.
I have been trying to appreciate something of the goldenness of autumn. I feel like I haven’t got outside enough to do this, but the late afternoon light has often been lovely to watch from the kitchen.
Some of our flowers came out in the September sun rather than in July, so autumn brown and winter grey haven’t taken over the garden yet. I love seeing the lavender in flower. Purple buds and dried lavender are so familiar, but the fresh flowers are such a lovely colour. This year I’ve been catching at lavender whenever I remember, getting a brief moment of scent on my fingers.
I love flowers with scent. One of the most rewarding ones is buddleia – I have a dried sprig in a vase which I picked in August. It still has a sweet honey-buddleia scent (up close), which is lovely to enjoy months after the flowers have faded.
These are just little things that I am trying to pick up as life and work continue at pace. Every holiday is a deadline – a challenge to meet goals before routines and priorities change again. Holidays allow for a lot more noticing – and I often feel that I’m trying to catch up with all the noticing I couldn’t do in the rush of everyday life. I’m not getting outside quite as much right now, but I appreciate how this blog helps me to reflect on what I have seen, and also gives me a nudge about what else I could do to take time and stop on occasion. I still wander out into the garden for a short while now and then. There were late butterflies to enjoy last month, and the birds are always singing. Mostly it’s sparrows, but we have a melodic blackbird as well.
My next post will probably be at the start of December, which is the sort of month where Christmas tasks can take three weeks to be whittled away, and where I start setting a timer to get through small chunks of different tasks every evening. I think of November as the eye of the storm, so I will enjoy the relative calm.