Mists and mellow fruitfulness

Apparently, while I was building sandcastles and sitting around a firepit, summer abruptly pulled up its stakes and moved on.  Party’s over.  Summer’s gone and fall is here.  All this week I’ve scrutinized the colors outside, wondering as always, why it so immediately and completely looks like fall.  For one thing, the colors of the trees and the fields are reversed.  The fields gave up their blooms of yellows, golds, oranges and reds, turning deep and dark bronzes, browns and purples.  The trees are the season’s show offs, and the maples are already starting the show with twinges of yellow and scarlet here and there. 

What stopped me dead in my tracks on my walk this morning were white aster blooming amidst the creamy froth of the Queen Anne’s lace.  And then I saw lilac and purple asters waving among the blue cornflowers.  I’m not ready.  I need more time.  I'm aghast that August has ended.  Summer is my time of production and creation.  I need more.  I need a LOT more. 

But I also crave the calm and order of September.  The kids go back to school and we all enjoy the quiet and comfort of a return to normalcy and routines.  “Happy is the home where everyone learns and does his duty,” says that wild party animal, Martin Luther.  

My back yard is suddenly full of little birds smaller than sparrows – some kind of finches, I think.  Darting, flitting, fluttering, zoomming, divebombing – they are very busy.  Waving around ontop of a thistle, bungiejumping on a milkweed, suddenly, poof!  They’re gone.   But here, read the real thing!  Nobody can compete with Keats.

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-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 twinèd 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 barrèd 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.”