A celebration of trees: October: Autumn

I think it was Dr Seuss’s Lorax who said “I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.” Well, this month I don’t need to speak for the trees – their profound autumn beauty speaks very eloquently for itself, no words required.

This has been autumn in Cardiff.

Do you love trees? Then you might like to look over my previous months’ celebrations of trees by clicking on the following links: January (one particular favourite), February (about lime avenues), March (on the subject of forests), April (about the greening of the trees in the British springtime), May (on the New Zealand pohutukawa), June (about some of Auckland’s most notable trees), July (honouring ten wondrous trees from my international travels), August (following pathways through forests and woodlands), and September (about dead trees that have been given new life)  .

Autumn in Cheshire

I was hoping to arrive in time to see the last of the autumn colour here in Cheshire before the winter wind and rain blows it all away, and I’ve been lucky. In just a week, here’s what I’ve been privileged to see, accompanied by the thoughts of others who’ve appreciated autumn in their turn.

Dunham Massey

‘No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.’ John Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Tatton Park

‘I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.’ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

Delamere Forest

‘There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.’ Joe L. Wheeler

Dunham Massey

‘Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.’ Jim Bishop

Neumann's Flash, Northwich Community Woodlands

‘The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.’ Henry Beston

 

Tatton Park

‘Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.’ Samuel Butler

Northwich Community Woodlands

‘The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.’ John Greenleaf Whittier

Tatton Park

‘And I rose / In rainy autumn / And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...’ Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems

Dunham Massey

‘Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.’ Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance

Dunham Massey

‘Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.’ William Allingham

Delamere Forest

‘Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.’ George Eliot

Dunham Massey

‘For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.’ Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America.

Homage to Autumn in Auckland

Auckland has quite a temperate climate so we don’t really get a lot of autumn colour – at least, nothing like the spectacular multi-coloured images you see from those places that get snow and sub-zero winter temperatures. But, if you look hard – or get down on the ground in the park, you can find traces of vibrant colour.

This ivy-covered concrete wall borders the southern motorway in Mt Hobson Rd, Newmarket

‘Winter is an etching, spring a watercolour, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.’ ~ Stanley Horowitz

In Auckland Domain

‘Come little leaves’, said the Wind one day. ‘Come to the meadows with me and play. Put on your dresses of red and gold; for summer is past, and the days grow cold.’ ~ George Cooper

An ivy-covered wall in Dacre Street, inner-city Auckland

‘The time for longer, more everlasting contentment is in the autumn of our lives.’ ~ Albert Emerson Unaterra

Ivy on a building wall at the University of Auckland

‘Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.’ ~ Albert Camus

In Auckland Domain

‘Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.’ ~ Emily Bronte

A gingko tree in Auckland Domain

‘Autumn carries more gold in its hand than all the other seasons.’ ~ Jim Bishop

Auckland Domain

‘Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.’ ~ Robert Browning

Back of the George Fraser Gallery building in Princes Street, Auckland

‘Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile’ ~ William Cullen Bryant

Parnell Rose Gardens

‘Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.’ ~ Samuel Butler

On a building in Dundonald Street, inner-city Auckland

‘Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.’ ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

Gingko trees in Eden Crescent in inner-city Auckland

‘How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and colour are their last days.’ ~ John Burroughs