Autumn
'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', the first line of a poem by John Keats which, in my opinion, captures the essence of autumn. If I am honest, autumn isn't my favourite season - spring is - but like all the seasons it has its good points and not so good points.
One aspect of autumn that I do enjoy is the autumn colour. The amount and intensity of colour in any particular year is affected by the weather conditions before and during the time when the chlorophyll in the leaves is decreasing. Ideally we need a succession of warm and sunny days followed by cool but not freezing nights to produce the best display. The sugars in the leaves combined with lots of sunshine produce the pigments but the amount of moisture in the soil also has an effect, so with our unpredictable British weather no two autumns are alike. Stella Books is in an area surrounded by deciduous woodlands so if the conditions are right there could be some spectacular colours this autumn. Why not visit the shop this autumn and see for yourself.
Every year as autumn nears people talk about the possibility of an 'Indian Summer' - especially if we've had a less than satisfactory summer. A definition of an Indian summer is 'any spell of warm, quiet hazy weather in September, October or November'. The term is thought to originate from the 18th Century in the USA and there are various possible explanations for the term 'Indian Summer' and its first use. One of these is that early native Indians on the Eastern side of the USA chose that time of year as their hunting season because the warm hazy conditions brought animals out into the open making them easier to spot. The hazy conditions helped to disguise the hunters and were sometimes accentuated by the lighting of the prairie grass to create smoky conditions. Sadly Indian Summers are fairly uncommon but we can live in hope!
As a child, collecting conkers, or Horse Chestnuts to give them their proper name, was essential. My friends and I would walk miles and miles to a conker tree (actually with hindsight it was probably less than a mile but it seemed much further at the time!) Cracking open the prickly outer case never got any easier but hoping to find the biggest conker ever drove us on. Cicely Mary Barker in her book 'Flower Fairies of the Autumn' captures perfectly the beautiful richness of a shiny conker, revealed as the outer casing splits open. I don't remember playing conkers very much but that didn't stop us collecting them!
A reader's letter published in the Daily Telegraph said that placing conkers around your house deterred spiders from entering; it seems they don't like the smell. They should be placed where spiders can enter the house and in areas where they make their webs. As a lifelong aracnaphobe I will give anything a try so this year I shall once again be gathering conkers although this time, unlike in my childhood, I will make full use of them. Every windowsill and room corner will have a few and not forgetting the plughole in the bath; a couple of hundred should do it!
Other autumn pleasures for me are blackberry picking (at least once each year is essential); picking the cooking apples off our tree to store for winter use (is it my imagination or are all the biggest, juiciest ones always just out of reach?); walking through crisp fallen leaves and, although I enjoy gardening, not having to mow the lawns or weed the garden quite so often is a benefit.
Psychologically, to me autumn means it's the end of summer (such as it is!) and it's downhill all the way to winter. I think that's the main reason autumn isn't my favourite time. Some of the other downsides to autumn, I feel, are the shorter days, the cooler temperatures and the swallows, swifts and house martins leaving for warmer climes. Looking on the bright side though, dark evenings give me the perfect excuse to draw the curtains, turn up the heating and settle down with a good book!
Submitted by Lorna Evans
Information gleaned from www.na.fs.fed.us and www.bbc.co.uk websites
(Published 15th Sep 2014)
