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.

Autumn’s bounty

This is a follow up to my previous blog, Homage to Autumn. Along with the glorious golds and oranges and reds of autumn leaves come the fruits and nuts, cones and seeds that ensure new life will spring forth after the long cold days of winter.

‘Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.’ ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

‘In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.’ ~ William Blake

‘The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.’ ~ James Allen

‘It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.’ ~ Orison Swett Marden

‘What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.’ ~ Meister Eckhart

‘Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.’ ~ Austin O'Malley

‘By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.’ ~ Robert A. Heinlein

‘Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream.’ ~ Debby Boone

‘The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies.’ ~ Gertrude Jekyll

‘Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower.’ ~ Shigenori Kameoka

‘Flowers and fruit are only the beginning. In the seed lies the life and the future.’ ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

‘The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.’ ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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