Labor Day brings Autumn's coming attractions

All day rain has threatened to fall, but hasn't. Temperatures have been neither hot nor cool. Skies have been cloudy all day. We've spent much of the day napping. It's been that kind of a day around here. We were almost tempted to do some more yard work, but the Better Half told us to go sit on the patio, or maybe she just said "Sit on it!" All of this may explain why we've been at a loss to come up with something worth sharing, then we realized today may just be the calm before the storm of Autumn's delights.

bread to be baked

Photo by J. Harrington

pumpkins to be carved

Photo by J. Harrington

apples eaten

Photo by J. Harrington

leaves watched

Photo by J. Harrington

Plus, flowers to be planted and, perhaps, even a trip or two to be taken. If only Lake Superior had striped bass and bluefish schooling up and feeding their way South. But, enough of nostalgia!

To Autumn

John Keats, 1795- 1821

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, 
  Drowsed 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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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