Autumn

I know it has been cool and rainy the last couple of days and almost looked like it could snow, but I really like this season. I like the smell (harvest, bonfires, new school supplies, leaves), being able to pull out my sweaters and vests, how things seem to slow down, the changing of colours.

One of my favorite memories of autumn is getting together with a bunch of my family on my Auntie Lindee and Uncle Norman's farm to haul and cut wood for my grandparent's wood burning stove. It was a lot of work but it was a great time to get together with cousins.  After all the work was done there would always be a huge feast and a game of soccer.

In celebration of the new season, here is a John Keats poem for you all to enjoy!

To Autumn

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-eaves 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.